Book excerpt: Python for the Lab is the first book covering how to develop instrumentation software. It is ideal for researchers willing to automatize their setups and bring their experiments to the next level. The book is the product of countless workshops at different universities, and a carefully design pedagogical strategy. With an easy to follow and task-oriented design, the book uncovers all the best practices in the field. It also shows how to design code for long-term maintainability, opening the doors of fruitful collaboration among researchers from different labs.