In the last post introducing Python, I demonstrated how to make a simple app using variables and conditional statements. In order to do anything really powerful in a given programming language though, ...

Python, for all its power and popularity, has long lacked a form of flow control found in other languages—a way to take a value and match it elegantly against one of a number of possible conditions.

Interested in learning Python but don't know where to start? I'll walk you through the basics of the ever-popular programming language step-by-step. In an hour or so, you'll go from zero to writing ...