Description

At the beginning of each chapter I’ll show you a short Python program and will ask you to guess the output. The possible answers can be:

• Syntax error
• Exception
• Hang
• Some output (e.g. `[1 2 3]`)

Here’s how to approach the puzzles. Read through the code. Before moving on to the answer and the explanation, go ahead and guess the output. After guessing the output, run the code and see the output yourself. Finally proceed to read the solution and the explanation. The puzzles are short enough to solve on a coffee break, so carry them with you, have fun, and share them with co-workers.

People who make mistakes during the learning process learn better than people who don’t. If you use this approach at work when fixing bugs, you’ll find you enjoy bug hunting more and become a better developer after each bug you fix.

Many of these puzzles are from the author’s lessons learned (and others) of shipping bugs to production. He often uses the puzzles as quizzes during conferences and meetups, and they tend to create a buzz of excitement.

Contents and Extracts

• Preface
• Foreword by Raymond Hettinger
• Dedication
• The Brain Teasers
  • 1. Ready Player One
  • 2. A Slice of π
  • 3. When in Kraków
  • 4. A Task to Do
  • 5. Send It to the Printer
  • 6. Spam, Spam, Spam
  • 7. User! Identify Yourself
  • 8. sorted? reversed?
  • 9. A Simple Math
  • 10. Will It Fit?
  • 11. Click the Button
  • 12. Attention Seeker
  • 13. Identity Crisis
  • 14. The Great Divide
  • 15. Where’s Waldo?
  • 16. Call Me Maybe
  • 17. Endgame
  • 18. Round and Round We Go
  • 19. TF (without IDF)
  • 20. A Divided Time
  • 21. Tell Me the Future
  • 22. Loop de Loop
  • 23. Path to Nowhere
  • 24. 12 Angry Men
  • 25. Look at the Pretty Colors
  • 26. Let’s Vote
  • 27. An Inside Job
  • 28. Here Kitty Kitty
  • 29. Not My Type
  • 30. Highly Valued
• Thanks
• Epilogue
• Index