Python for Absolute Beginners Transcripts
Chapter: Using external Python packages
Lecture: 01-external-packages-intro

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0:00 So far we've done really cool things
0:01 with Python, but the world of possibilities
0:04 is about to explode with what you can do with Python.
0:08 In this chapter we're going to talk about
0:10 working with external libraries, or external packages
0:13 as they're usually referred to in Python.
0:16 Remember that graph I showed you
0:17 the incredible growth of Python, how it's taking off?
0:20 That's because people are finding
0:22 Python capable of doing so many things.
0:24 And yes, what we've seen so far is pretty awesome
0:27 the language and some of the standard library, things like
0:30 os.path and JSON and so on, are very very powerful.
0:34 But they are dwarfed by these external
0:36 libraries that you can use.
0:37 There are so, so many of them.
0:39 So let's start this chapter with
0:41 a bit of a comic that tells that story.
0:44 Here we are back in our terminal.
0:46 And if we just go and run python3
0:48 we're back in our REPL, right?
0:50 Remember this?
0:52 Hello, world. Well, the way we use libraries in Python
0:55 is we say import remember, import json, import os
0:58 and then we could do json.load, or whatever it was.
1:02 Well, there's this XKCD comic that says
1:06 there's so many awesome things that you can import
1:08 mostly talking to the external
1:10 libraries, but also the stuff built in
1:11 that they said you can even import anti-gravity.
1:14 Check this out.
1:16 You import anti-gravity.
1:17 I type this, it launches this XKCD comic
1:20 and it's about Python.
1:21 So check this out, there's this guy
1:22 he says his friend is up there.
1:24 And this guy was, How are you flying?.
1:26 The guys is, Python. I learned it last night.
1:29 Everything's so simple. Hello World
1:31 is just print. Hello world.
1:33 I don't know. Dynamic typing in white space?.
1:35 Come join us, programming is fun again
1:37 It's a whole new world up here.
1:39 But how are you flying?.
1:40 I just typed import anti-gravity.
1:43 That's it?.
1:44 Yeah, I also sampled everything in the medicine cabinet
1:46 for comparison, but I think this is the Python.
1:48 Anyway, this is really cool.
1:50 And it's a joke that just touches on how many
1:55 things there are at your fingertips if you
1:57 wanted to start working with these external libraries.
2:00 And that's what we're going to do in this chapter
2:01 we're going to work with a couple of these libraries
2:03 that are super awesome, they're going to enhance
2:05 our game even further, and you'll see
2:07 just how easy it is to work with them.