Preface

We are all probably spending time doing small manual tasks that don't add much value. It may be scanning through information sources in search of the small bits of relevant information, working with spreadsheets to generate the same graph over and over, or searching files one by one until we find the data we're looking for. Some—probably most—of those tasks are, in fact, automatable. There's an investment upfront, but for the tasks that get repeated over and over, we can use computers to do these kinds of menial tasks and focus our own efforts instead on what humans are good for—high-level analysis and decision making based on the result. This book will explain how to use the Python language to automate common business tasks that can be greatly sped up if a computer is doing them.

Given the expressiveness and ease of use of Python, it's surprisingly simple to start making small programs to perform these actions and combine them into more integrated systems. Throughout the book, we will show small, easy-to-follow recipes that can be adapted to your specific needs, and we will combine them to perform more complex actions. We will perform common actions, such as detecting opportunities by scraping the web, analyzing information to generate automatic spreadsheet reports with graphs, communicating with automatically generated emails, getting notifications via text messages, and learning how to run tasks while your mind is focused on other more important stuff.

Though some Python knowledge is required, the book is written with non-programmers in mind, giving clear and instructive recipes that will further the reader's proficiency while being oriented to specific day-to-day goals.