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Ten Essays on Fizz Buzz

I've been quarantined for the last several months for reasons that are too boring to go into, which somehow gave me a lot more time to write. And so I am delighted to present to you a new book!

"This book is so good. I wish I'd written it." -- Tim Hopper (@tdhopper)

What's more, it's a book that's entirely about Fizz Buzz!

(Yes, I am 100% serious, and in fact the book is perfectly serious as well.)

While I suspect I could have come up with 100 ways of solving Fizz Buzz, most of them probably would not have been very interesting. However, I was able to come up with 10 solutions that are both interesting and varied; and I used each one as a launching-off point to discuss various aspects of coding, Python, Fizz Buzz, mathematics, software design, technical interviewing, and various other topics. Hence "Ten Essays on Fizz Buzz".

"I'd never have thought a book about Fizz Buzz would make be a better programmer, but I was wrong. Joel in the course of 10 chapters does a broad survey of core Python concepts, software design and testing, mathematics, and more (including deep learning) using Fizz Buzz as the guiding example. It's that rare technical book that remains engaging, entertaining, and accessible." -- Binal Patel (@binalkp91)

As you might expect from the description, it's sort of an unusual book. It's quite likely that you will learn a lot from reading it, but it's not really a book that you'd read in order to learn anything in particular. Most technical books are about specific technical topics; this one sort of isn't.

Nonetheless, it is emphatically a technical book. Each essay implements a different solution of Fizz Buzz. Each essay uses code to illustrate its ideas. Each essay represents my current best thinking about how to solve problems using Python.

More real Python tips than any "Python tricks" book! From a Python beginner to an experienced ML practitioner, you're bound to learn something about the language and its application to a progressive level of algorithmic applications. Recommended for anyone looking to "level up" their Python or problem solving skills! -- Tom Marthaler (@tmarthal)

For now, the book is available on LeanPub at fizzbuzzbook.com. I may do a print version at some point. If you just want to see the solutions and not the essays, you can find those at github.com/joelgrus/fizzbuzz.

I'm extremely proud of how the book turned out. Please read it and enjoy it and let me know what you like about and don't like about it. And please tell your friends and neighbors and relatives and acquaintances and anyone else you know who loves Fizz Buzz.

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