Chapter 1: A Primer on Python 3
Since its development in the early 1990s, Python has become one of the most widely used programming languages in the world. Its easy-to-use yet powerful syntax and cross-platform availability, combined with a rich ecosystem of pre-built functionality, have turned it into one of the most widely used languages in the realm of infrastructure automation. From simple automation scripts to complex web applications, Python can handle a wide variety of tasks.
In this chapter, we are going to review some basic concepts of the Python programming language before using these skills in the following chapters to automate our infrastructure.
While not being a full introduction to the Python language, this chapter should serve as a refresher for the concepts we are going to use in the automation script in later chapters. If you are already proficient with Python, you can skip ahead to the next chapter.
Specifically, you will learn about the following concepts...