Grokking Advanced Python
Learn the Python that larger programs depend on: error handling, classes, generators, files, threads, and networking.
Course Overview
Grokking Advanced Python teaches the parts of Python that larger programs depend on. It starts where Grokking Python Fundamentals ends. You will learn error handling, decorators, context managers, object-oriented programming, iterators, generators, and functional programming. The course then covers the standard library for everyday tasks: regular expressions, files, threads, asyncio, networking, dates, and JSON. Every topic comes with short examples that you can edit and run in the browser, and each topic chapter ends with a quiz. The course is for programmers who know basic Python and for developers who know classes and exceptions from another language. It does not teach data science libraries or web frameworks. Everything in it uses Python and its standard library. By the end, you will understand the language itself and know which module to use for errors, files, threads, or network access.
What you'll learn in Grokking Advanced Python
- Catch, raise, and define your own exceptions, and find bugs with logging and the pdb debugger.
- Write decorators that add behavior to a function and context managers that always release resources.
- Write lambda functions and use map, filter, and reduce to transform data in a single expression.
- Search, extract, and replace text patterns with regular expressions and the re module.
- Run tasks at the same time with threads, locks, and asyncio, and learn what the GIL limits.
- Work with dates and times, JSON, closures, and text templates from the standard library.
- Replace hand-written bookkeeping with Counter, defaultdict, and deque from the collections module.
- Model data with classes, using constructors, inheritance, polymorphism, abstraction, and encapsulation.
- Build iterators and generators that produce values one at a time instead of filling memory with a list.
- Read and write files, and create, rename, and remove files and directories from Python code.
- Write a socket client and server, and fetch web pages and parse URLs with the urllib package.
- Edit and run the code examples in the browser, and test yourself with the quiz that ends each topic chapter.
Course Content
Python - Advanced Concepts
Python - Functional Programming
Python - Regular expression
Concurrency and Parallelism
Python - Networking
Python Miscellaneous
What people say about our courses
About the Author
Arslan Ahmad
Industry Expertise & Leadership
Arslan Ahmad is the lead author of Grokking Advanced Python. As the founder of Design Gurus and a former FAANG hiring manager, he has worked at industry giants like Facebook (now Meta) and Microsoft.
He has conducted hundreds of system design interviews, giving him unique insight into what top tech companies look for in candidates.
The course also incorporates expertise from senior engineers at Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Uber, ensuring you learn system design best practices from professionals who have built and scaled real-world systems.
500+
Interviews Conducted
10k+
Students Taught
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FAQs
What is Grokking Advanced Python?
It is the second Python course on Design Gurus, and it starts where Grokking Python Fundamentals ends. It covers error handling, the collections and itertools modules, decorators, context managers, object-oriented programming, functional programming, regular expressions, files, concurrency, networking, and other standard library tools.
Who is this course for?
It is for programmers who can already write basic Python, for developers who know classes and exceptions from another language and want to learn how Python handles them, and for computer science students who use Python in their coursework.
What do I need to know before I start?
You should be comfortable with variables, data types, conditionals, loops, lists, tuples, dictionaries, sets, functions, and importing modules. Grokking Python Fundamentals teaches all of these, and we recommend taking it first if any of them are unfamiliar.
How is it different from Grokking Python Fundamentals?
Fundamentals teaches the core language: syntax, control flow, the built-in collections, and functions. This course teaches what larger programs need on top of that, like exceptions, classes, generators, decorators, and the standard library modules for files, threads, and networking.
Does it cover data science or web frameworks?
No. The course does not teach NumPy, pandas, or a web framework like Django or Flask. It focuses on the language itself and on the standard library, which is the set of modules that comes with every Python installation.
Is this an interview preparation course?
No. It teaches the language in more depth. Classes, exceptions, generators, and the collections module appear often in interview solutions, though, so the course is useful background before you practice coding problems in Python.
Do I need to install anything?
Most examples run in the browser, so you can start without a local setup. A few lessons on files, sockets, and the Jinja2 template library work best on your own computer, because they need files, a running server, or a package that the browser environment does not provide.
Is there any practice, or is it only reading?
Most lessons include code examples that you can edit and run in the browser, and every chapter after the introduction ends with a quiz on its topics.
Is the course text-based or video-based?
It is text-based, with runnable code in most lessons. You read an explanation, change the example, run it, and see the result without pausing or rewinding anything.
Do I get a certificate of completion?
Yes. Design Gurus issues a certificate once you have completed the course, and you can share the link directly or add it to your LinkedIn profile.
