You run your very first Python program, full of hope — and the screen answers back with red text: SyntaxError: invalid syntax. If your stomach dropped, you’re in good company. This is the single most common error in Python, and every programmer aliv...

I want to tell you about a year I lost. Not a dramatic year. Nobody would have looked at me and thought anything was wrong. I opened my laptop most evenings. I watched the videos. I had a notebook with colour-coded headings and everything. And at th...

Notice the squiggles under the line. Python is pointing at the + — that’s where the trouble is, not the variable. What Python is actually saying The + symbol does two different jobs depending on what’s on either side of it.Between two numbers, it ad...