Al Sweigart is a professional software developer who teaches programming to kids and adults. Sweigart has written several bestselling programming books for beginners, including Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python, Cracking Codes with Python, and Coding with Minecraft (all from No Starch Press).

If you've ever spent hours renaming files or updating hundreds of spreadsheet cells, you know how tedious tasks like these can be. What if you could have your computer do that for you? In this second edition of Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, you'll learn the basics of programming in Python, the fastest growing programming language today, before moving on to create Python programs that effortlessly perform useful and impressive feats of automation to:

Search for text in a file or across multiple files

Create, update, move, and rename files and folders

Search the Web and download online content

Update and format data in Excel spreadsheets of any size

Split, merge, watermark, and encrypt PDFs

Send reminder emails and text notifications

Fill out online forms

This updated edition is full of step-by-step instructions that walk through each program. Practice projects at the end of each chapter challenge you to improve those programs and use your newfound skills to automate similar tasks.

Don't spend your time doing work a well-trained monkey could do. Even if you've never written a line of code, you can make your computer do the grunt work. Learn how in Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, 2nd Edition.