Beginning Python: From Novice to Professional 436
nazarijo writes "Python seems to be devouring everything these days,
with more and more people using it for serious projects. It's quickly
supplanting Perl in some circles, and with good reason. It's a powerful,
richly featured language with boatloads of extensions. And, unlike Perl,
it's very easy to do complicated things in simple, legible code. Python
books are still only a small part of the shelf at your local bookstore
when you compare it to the popularity of Perl, but which ones are the gems
and which ones are fluff? Having looked at a lot of Python books in the past
couple of years, I think that Beginning Python: From Novice to Professional
is the one that I'll most recommend to people." Read on for the rest of Jose's review.
| Beginning Python: From Novice to Professional | |
| author | Magnus Lie Hetland |
| pages | 604 |
| publisher | Apress |
| rating | 8/10 |
| reviewer | Jose Nazario |
| ISBN | 159059519X |
| summary | Tour the Python language, from basics to advanced modules |
Beginning Python is loosely grouped into three main sections. The first deals with Python fundamentals, all the goodies that are inherent to the language and the modules that it ships with. It's surprising to see how rich the language is out of the box, especially when compared to some other scripting languages. The second section would be the chapters covering popular extensions for a variety of services. These include network and web programming, SQL objects, and even GUI programming. And finally the third section is a set of 10 projects in Python, which bring everything together in a concise fashion.
I like this book a lot because it is very clear in its delivery, both the prose and the code examples used, and is consistently Pythonic. The Python language lends itself to a powerful programming style and, unlike Perl, many Python developers I know don't bother with a dozen ways to perform a simple action, they get it done and move on. What you wind up with is clear code that's easily understood by someone new to the language.
Unlike what the title would suggest, Beginning Python isn't only for the first few weeks with the language. The book is large and in depth, and the coverage of material is fantastic in many ways. You get a quick tour of the basics and then you move on to an overview of the language and then its common features. The inclusion of the 10 projects is another benefit to the intermediate user. She can refer back to this book for additional information and pointers from time to time, it wont sit still on her shelf.
That said, there are a few things in the book that I tend to disagree with. For example, the author dissuades you from using destructors in your code, but in my experience they're far more reliable, and a better place to do some cleanup, than he states. A few chapters are also a bit skimpy when they didn't need to be. For example, Chapter 18, which covers packagers like the distutils component from Python, needed to be fleshed out a lot more. This is a powerful feature in Python and sound docs on it should just be there. There's no reason to hold back on something so vital. The section on profiling in Chapter 16 is also a bit thin around the middle when it needn't be. While this seems like a minor point, having a reference to speeding up code (and measuring the improvements) is always nice. And finally, Chapter 17, which covers extending Python, is simply too short for its own good. A more in depth example would have been appreciated.
I have begun recommending this book to people I know that are smart and program in other languages, but aren't very familiar with Python. Many beginners books only take a person so far before they become a useless item on the shelf. This means that he $30 or more that was spent is now gone, so I've grown to be observant of how long I expect a book to be useful. I anticipate the useful shelf life of Beginning Python will be longer than average for most general purpose programming books for a single language. What's more is that it's not a dry reference book. Couple this to a Python cookbook for recipes and you have a two volume "mastering Python" series.
If you've been curious to learn Python and haven't yet found the book that speaks to you clearly, this may be the one. I'm pleased with the quality of the writing, the examples, and the quick pace of the book. While it's nearly 30 chapters in length, most of them are short and focused, making them easily digestible and highly useful. Overall probably the best Python books I've had the good fortune of reading."
You can purchase Beginning Python: From Novice to Professional from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Civilization IV is Python and XML (Score:0, Interesting)
Totally fresh in programming (Score:5, Interesting)
I am probably not the smartest person in the world, and I have no programming experience what so ever. What I am looking for, is some easy language to either script or program. Would python provide a good starting environment? Have any of you been at my level, then learned python?
I have tried to do as much research as possible myself, but it seems that everyone I ask just woke up one morning, and found themselves to be able to program three or more languages (in other words, they do not remember how they started out). I have also tried to learn several languages by reading some O'Reilly books and similar, but I have been put off by the seemingly academic english that is used (my native language is norwegian, by the way).
If anyone have any recommendation, as tho where to start, I would be more than happy.
Before too many people post please read this! (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Totally fresh in programming (Score:2, Interesting)
I starred to make som tweas in the environment and the language but "Unfortunatley" I got a job right after I finished so I didn't have time to finish the projec. In case someone is interested, more information and a manhandle beta can be found at:
http://www.gahnstrom.se/tim/pystarter/ [gahnstrom.se]
Tim
Re:Simple, Legible Code (Score:3, Interesting)
In Python, it is easy to make legible code, but it is difficult to make illegible code.
I would argue that this fact makes it harder to write legible code in perl than in python.
Re:Totally fresh in programming (Score:3, Interesting)
First, PHP shares much of its syntax with other popular languages today. It looks a lot like C*, Perl, Java, and JavaScript. The control structures, many of the operators, and other parts of the language are all remarkably similar. In my opinion, this will reduce your learning curve as you tradition to other languages.
Second, PHP is ubiquitous immediately applicable. You can find it installed on almost any web server, and in a variety of other places. It is designed around being used to create web pages, but it's also rich enough to use it as a general-purpose scripting language without much trouble. Additionally, the core functions take care of many details you may not want to deal with right away, but it gets out of your way if you want to dig deeper into how everything works.
For what it's worth, my learning path as a programmer was GW-BASIC to QBasic to Visual Basic to Perl. I started in elementary school by typing in programs from old children's books. I picked up OOP concepts from Visual Basic. Today, I do most of my programming in PHP, but I have a passing familiarity with Perl and to a lesser extent, Python.
I know a lot of languages, but none very well
The ability to do basic (no pun intended) programming is incredibly liberating. Good luck!
Re:Devouring? (Score:5, Interesting)
"written in python": 665,000 hits
"written in perl": 1,140,000 hits
"written in c": 1,500,000 hits
"written in c++": 772,000 hits
"written in c#": 342,000 hits
"written in java": 1,750,000 hits
"written in haskell": 33,600 hits
"written in lisp": 61,400 hits
"written in pascal": 51,800 hits
"written in objective c": 26,800 hits
"written in ruby": 120,000 hits
I'm not sure what this measures, but it's interesting. :) Python actually did a lot better than I expected.
Python Riddles (Score:3, Interesting)
As if python itself wasn't fun enough :)
Re:python regexes (Score:1, Interesting)
Python regexes do anything Perl regexes can do, but they aren't as fully integrated into the language: you have to type more characters to accomplish the same thing. Regexes are a hugely common task, so this difference is significant for many real-world uses, particularly short one-time-use scripts used by system administrators.
As with many areas of comparison between Python and Perl, the extra effort will sometimes make for better programming in the long run (eg, encourage you to precompile your regexes for better performance). When you only want a quick-and-dirty, use-once-and-throw-away script, Perl will be your choice. But if you plan to re-use your code (or if you don't plan on it but later wish you had), Python is worth the slight differences, even the strange ones like the unique approach to list indexing.
The most important example of how Python is better for code re-use, in my mind, is exception handling. Python has a built-in, powerful, hierarchical (you can just catch a parent class and be sure you're handling all the children), nestable, extensible (define your own exceptions) system of exception handling. Perl has eval blocks. You COULD use eval blocks to write nested exception handling, if you religously catch every exception and re-throw what you don't handle. But that strategy is laborious and error-prone and I've never seen anyone seriously attempt it.
In short, Perl makes you do extra work to support stuff (like exceptions and, to a lesser extent, inheritance) that should be built in to a modern language. Python can feel awkward (compared to Perl, but try doing this stuff in Java) trying to do some common stuff that ought to be easy (like regexes). It all depends which features you value.
To return to the topic at hand, Python's "one right way" mindset can be more of an obstacle than it should be, because the documentation isn't geared toward newcomers. Say you're starting out in Python (or haven't used Python in ages) and you need to concatenate a string and an integer. The answer is simple and concise, but see how long it takes you to find it in Python's online documentation. I hope that new books will help.
Re:Totally fresh in programming (Score:3, Interesting)
The funny thing about cross-platform applications is that, until you have done a few, it is easy to make mistakes. This is especially true if the software in question is not entirely self-contained. Heck, Windows even has different file handling abilities than most other systems. In the real world these issues are thorny enough that most people don't really bother. After all, most applications only end up running on one architecture. In fact, most applications only end up running on a handful of machines. Python is easy enough to use that you quickly find yourself writing scripts that are not only custom to your machine, but customized to the way that you like to work. For example, I have a set of scripts that I wrote for altering the HTML versions of baen.com's ebooks so that they make slightly nicer plucker ebooks. Next thing I knew I had a script that logs into my account using my username and password, downloads all of the new books I have purchased, mangles them, and formats them as plucker ebooks. It then checks to see if there are any new free ebooks on baen's site and downloads and formats them as well. Lastly, it updates of list of "books to read" so that I can know which books are new and which books I have already read.
Clearly, I am not the least bit interested in making sure that particular piece of software is portable. Why should I? I know perfectly well that for the forseeable future my home desktop will be a Linux box. I chose Python (over Java which I use professionally) because I knew that Python would get the job done in less time. HTTP transfers, zip files, HTML mangling, etc. are all things that Python does extremely well with a minimum of fuss.
Basically, I use Python because it is fun. The fact that I can easily write portable software is part of what makes Python fun (it makes what can be a difficult job painless and easy), but it is only a part of what makes Python fun enough that I use it to mangle ebooks instead of mangling them by hand.
Re:Totally fresh in programming (Score:3, Interesting)
Second, any language that requires indenting to signify code blocks is in my mind a great step backwards to the days of Fortran. This makes code blocking too vulnerable to pretty printers and version control methods that may "adjust" indentation.
Re:Devouring? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Devouring? (Score:3, Interesting)
Here are the current Freshmeat [freshmeat.net] statistics. The numbers are the number of projects in the specified programming language. I've omitted those with fewer than 10 projects. They probably give a fairly good idea of the popularity of programming languages if you take into account the bias toward the Free Software world. In the MS Windows world Visual Basic, for example, would no doubt rank much higher. Also note that these are cumulative over the past 6 years or so.
For the scripting languages, Perl and PHP lead, followed by Python, then Javascript, then Tcl. Ruby still isn't that popular on Freshmeat, and Lua, REXX and Pike hardly register.
Re:Devouring? (Score:3, Interesting)
"written in REXX": 809
"written in CLIST": 168
"written in scheme": 34,900
"written in RPG": 700
"written in FORTH": 10,900
"written in objective-c": 26,700
"written in WFL": 5
"written in tcl": 106,000
"written in bash": 24,000
"written in korn": 480
"written in smalltalk": 20,400
And finally...
"written in curses": 40
Language Discipline (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps for you.
"Maintainability" is undefined for this problem set. I can't maintain Python code because I fucking despise the language, for the same reason I don't like anal uptight bastards in three-piece suits -- it's inflexible. There's only one way of doing things, and often it is not be best way in specific situations.
For me, it always comes back to blocking. Whitespace-as-blocking is a straightjacket, chosen for aesthetics, and not for any practical reason. This design philosophy permeates Python, making it one of the ugliest languages I know.
It's like music. Any number of corporate-whore bands create smooth, aesthetic music that is bland and boring. I like my music hard, with sharp edges and dangerous points. For me, Python has always been the N*Sync of the programming world (VB is like New Kids On The Block, fwiw). Perl is more like the Pixies. LISP is like the Beatles. C is like the Stones. FORTH is like Gus' first album. Assembly is like the Black Keys. Java is like Abba.
Huh. This is kinda fun.
Now you can tell me about how programming is engineering, and not art. Go on, I know you want to.
Re:O, yeah? (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, you could always deference $a into another variable and access it that way instead, but that's the sort of "throwing extra code at it" that I meant.
I'm not saying Perl is bad. A lot of people use it to do lots of things. For me, though, the warts eventually overwhelmed the pearls and I went looking elsewhere.