Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating:  
Summary: Slowly Paced
Comment: If your goal is to get up to speed quickly with Python this might not be the book for you. Especially if you already have programming experience then you are better off downloading the documentation from python.org. That documentation covers the same material but much more succinctly. For example, in the reference manual at python.org, the "while" statement is described in less than a dozen lines of text, while in "Learning Python" it drags on across multiple pages.
The advantage of "Learning Python" is this: (1) the author shares the style and idioms that experienced Python programmers would use; and (2) the author offers insight into the history and design of the language. This allows the reader to "taste" the language as well as learn it. But for a quick path to learning Python, I would recommend using the website's documentation.
Customer Rating:
Summary: (3rd. ed.)Best way to learn Python
Comment: I used to say that there were several good books for learning Python. You just had to browse them and choose what works for you. Not anymore. This third edition, along with coverage of Python2.5, adds dark tabs for the exercises at the ends of most chapters, and I think that many people can now learn the language by just trying the exercises and comparing with the answers in the back. The sidebars are interesting. The tables are clear. The examples are instructive. The typesetting is well-chosen. Despite all the materials availabe free on the web, this book is worth the price.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Get the Learning Perl book authors to write about Python
Comment: I've been wanting to learn Python for a while. Hearing that the 3rd edition of Learning Python had added "exercises", I ordered it. It was a mistake.
The book winds its way through each facet of the language one by one, making no attempt to integrate what you are supposed to be learning into a working, functional solid.
The exercises consist of simple parrot questions: "Name the four major components of the module search path." Even the major exercises are childish. After the chapter "Advanced Function Topics", write a function which prints its single argument. Then try passing it more than one argument, or no arguments, to see what happens!
The code examples are never more than five lines, usually initialization of a variable, then a toy operation on that variable, with in-line comments taking the place of actual demonstration. A particularly choice tidbit comes when the author demonstrates making user-defined classes adopt the iteration protocol. He gives as an example a class which iterates over a predefined series of square numbers, then finishes the section with a note to the effect that such a simple procedure should really be programmed using a list comprehension.
The author constantly urges the reader to try things in interactive mode, but he doesn't give much of an idea what to try. Of course the reader can make up exercises, or rewrite a old program, which is what I have resorted to, using this book as a reference manual, but that's hardly ideal. The author is an expert on Python, and I don't know anything yet; he should be directing my exploration of the language, not just handing me an atlas.
I give this book credit for completeness and for clarity of explanation. The author lays out language features and tells you how they operate in a way that is easy to grasp. What he fails to do is to get the reader coding and actually using all the bits of the language, so that actual work can be done. He notes that the creator of Python has a mathematical background, which accounts for the consistency of the language design. It may also account for the lack of practical instruction.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Python is easy - well...
Comment: Python has the reputation to be a language that is easy to learn. Well, why do you need a book more than 500 pages to only learn the language then? The answer is that even if you can learn the basics very fast, it has a lot of bells and whistles that can take time to master.
This book covers only the language not the libraries, but covers it very well. Highly recommended reading once you'll want to use the language to write something bigger than a script of 10 lines.
4 stars only because I would have expected some exposure to the standard libraries as well for a book called "Learning Python"
Customer Rating:
Summary: I'm not impressed
Comment: I'm talking about the 3rd edition. It's the first book about Python that I read, so I can't make a comparison. It may be just the best first book out there, but I'm not impressed. The book reads like a draft, not a book in its 3rd edition. The author just keeps repeating himself on minor points in subsections back and forth. It's 700 pages long, but I wish it were half the length, after cutting needless elaboration and repetition. Perhaps the older editions are more concise. On the other hand, we readers may not have a choice.
|
|
|
