- Paperback: 624 pages
- Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 2 edition (30 Dec 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0596002815
- ISBN-13: 978-0596002817
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 17.8 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 492,413 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
Learning Python
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Product Description
Review
As a book for programmers who want to learn Python, it does a very good job. The coverage is informative and well order; making it easy to find what you're looking for. Overall, if you do some work with Python, you will benefit from owning this book. " - Sam Smith, news@UK, March "This book is a good example of Python culture, in the clarity of its text as much as in the quality of its code. Anyhone working their way through it will have a solid foundation upon which to explore Python's potential. Highly recommended." - Ivan Uemilianin, CVu, October 2004
Product Description
Portable, powerful, and a breeze to use, Python is the popular open source object-oriented programming language used for both standalone programs and scripting applications. Python is considered easy to learn, but there's no quicker way to mastery of the language than learning from an expert teacher. This edition of Learning Python puts you in the hands of two expert teachers, Mark Lutz and David Ascher, whose friendly, well-structured prose has guided many a programmer to proficiency with the language.
Learning Python, Second Edition, offers programmers a comprehensive learning tool for Python and object-oriented programming. Thoroughly updated for the numerous language and class presentation changes that have taken place since the release of the first edition in 1999, this guide introduces the basic elements of the latest release of Python 2.3 and covers new features, such as list comprehensions, nested scopes, and iterators/generators.
Beyond language features, this edition of Learning Python also includes new context for less-experienced programmers, including fresh overviews of object-oriented programming and dynamic typing, new discussions of program launch and configuration options, new coverage of documentation sources, and more. There are also new use cases throughout to make the application of language features more concrete.
The first part of Learning Python gives programmers all the information they'll need to understand and construct programs in the Python language, including types, operators, statements, classes, functions, modules and exceptions. The authors then present more advanced material, showing how Python performs common tasks by offering real applications and the libraries available for those applications. Each chapter ends with a series of exercises that will test your Python skills and measure your understanding.
Learning Python, Second Edition is a self-paced book that allows readers to focus on the core Python language in depth. As you work through the book, you'll gain a deep and complete understanding of the Python language that will help you to understand the larger application-level examples that you'll encounter on your own. If you're interested in learning Python--and want to do so quickly and efficiently--then Learning Python, Second Edition is your best choice.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Slow moving for those with previous programming experience.,
By
This review is from: Learning Python (Paperback)
If, like me and many other programmers, you are already somewhat familiar with C++ and Perl, you'll find this book slow moving. I would guess that few people start with Python as their first major programming language.I'm about 40% through the book and we've only just covered function calls, and nothing OO. There's only been 4 or 5 new concepts so far that aren't identical to other common languages. The author does go some way towards saying "this is similar to the C idea of ..." or "those familiar with C++ will recognise the similarities...". But what would be really useful would be a big bar next to the few concepts that are fundamentally different, saying "!!!Python Specific!!!" or something. Having said that, there's few typos and the writing style is reasonable. I'd like to give it 3.5 stars really.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
NOT for beginners.,
By
This review is from: Learning Python (Paperback)
While this book may be helpful to experienced programmers who are new to Python, it's emphatically not for those who are hoping to learn programming.
The authors claim that the only prerequisite for readers is that they know how to use a computer. Sorry, but this really isn't the case at all. I don't think I'm a total beginner - In the past, I've had some experience of writing both games and business applications - but after a few weeks of trying to use this book, I've had enough. Essentially, here's what to expect from the average chapter: 30 or 40 pages of dry as dust descriptions of various aspects of the language, mostly without any hint of why they are useful or important. The examples given along the way are mostly just 2 or three line of coding which still fail to give the slightest hint why the particular command is useful or worth remembering. Those who have previous programming experience will already know, but this is supposed to be a book for beginners, who will just be increasingly confused. Finally, after all the many, many pages of explanations, you get a page or two of practical exercises. Alas, by this time the beginner has forgotten the reams of information already provided, having had no incentive to remember it in the first place. My 2-star review is based on the fact that this book markets itself as being for total beginners. It isn't. If you are an experienced programmer looking to learn Python, this book MIGHT be for you. If you're a beginner looking to learn programming, this book has only one use: as a cure for insomnia.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good grounding in concepts, but needs more contextualising,
By
This review is from: Learning Python (Paperback)
I've been learning Python from this book now for a few months. The book is well written, it's clear and the authors 'take care' of the reader. However I doubt whether many total beginners (as I was and still am) are going to read this book and finish feeling that they can now go away and start to work out how to write a decent, simple program. The problem as I see it is that whilst there are good, well explained examples of what a FOR loop might be, and what you would be typing if you want to use functions, WHY you might be wanting to do this is often not covered. It's a bit like learning French by learning the punctuation, the alphabet, the pronunciation, and the vocabulary without knowing what the meaning of the words are, how they are used or how to make sentences. Many more examples of how one might display graphical output for budding gamewriters, or how one might use Windows style interfaces for those who want to write applications are needed for the content of this book to make sense. What is missing here is 'the point' behind learning to program. It's a very 'bottom-up' approach.
Having said that, this book is great for when you might need clarification on elements of Python, and as a general detailed resource on Python fundamentals.
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