Practical Python

If you believe one learns more from others than from books and you are a beginner, this book is for you. I always use Python in a hurry. Python pampered me into a lazy learner, but who's to blame? To me, Python is like a friend I am deeply attatched to but never know enough, until I found this book. Yes, even beginners can start USING Python in a week or two. But he/she also knows the difference between his/her programming skill and the professionals'. Well, Magnus will help you catch up with them in a few days' joyful reading. Like Code Complete this book teaches you things you can only learn from experience but it achieves this by using a pedagogical (and practical) programming language, ten illustrative and generalizable projects, and good writing. I can't help you learning Python, but recommanding this book is the least I can do.

I am currently working on a project which involves a software tool for energy benchmarking. Up until now I have been using an interpreted language (which will go unmentioned, I don't want to start a flame war). Although this language is good for a lot of things, it was becoming increasingly difficult to use it for my project. I felt that the project was getting too big to maintain the code in a orderly way. For a while I have trying to port the whole shebang to C++, but it felt like trying to kill a mosquito with a cannon (like in that Monty Python sketch). My search on the wonderful worldwide web confirmed what I already knew, I should try to use Python for my project (read 'why Python' by Eric Raymond for instance). After dabbling around with tutorials and the like I thought it was time to buy a real book. I came across 'Practical Python' by Magnus Lie Hetland pretty soon and downloaded a sample chapter. After reading this I just knew this was the book for me. It's well written, it has good examples and is written with humour. Humour, I think at least, is important but very personal and Hetland manages to find a good balance between humour and 'serious' coding. The examples are clear and especially noteworthy are the projects which are in the last part of the book. This is practical! Once you mastered the language you can use your knowledge in real applications. The book reads like a Stephen King novel. Exciting, you want to know what's on the next page before you go to sleep (if you can sleep...).Overall this book is a winner. I would like to recommend it to everyone who wants to learn Python and have a nice time reading it also. I know that I did!

I bought this book because I went through the author's online tutorials at his website (www.hetland.org). I enjoyed his writing style there and thought the book should be good as well. The book is even better than I had imagined an introductory programming text could be. I have been dabbling with learning Python for a while now, so the basics of the language and of programming in general were known to me. This book helped expand that basic knowledge quite a bit. It really brings together what I had read in other beginning-level books, and even explains some things that the others neglect to.If you have little to no programming experience, this book can help you. If you are an experienced programmer in another language, this book can help you. If you already know Python, this book can still teach you a few things. And true to the Python culture, it is a good read with humor injected throughout.

I'm new to programming (except for BASIC 15 years ago!) and thought I'd start with Python, since it's reputed to be both powerful AND fairly easy. To get started, I went through all the online tutorials I could find, and bought The Python Bible and Quick Python, both of which were slightly beyond my grasp.I bought this book in order to learn some basic XML handling in Python and got SO MUCH MORE! This is how all computer books should be. It's increadibly readable, with new terms and concepts explained thoroughly (and with good, RELEVANT EXAMPLES!). The projects aren't exactly what I need, but illustrate the concepts well and are fun to play with. Overall, I can't recommend this enough. I've never been so happy with a technical book, and I sincerely hope Mr. Hetland has more on the way.

I have most of the published python books and have been using python for over a year now. The language is a revalation in its simplicity and extensiveness.This book covers how to use python. The first few chapters introduce the language for beginners but I recommend experienced programmers to glance at the pages for insights into what for me were unknown ways of using python. The whole book just seems to add knowledge and provide additional programming power.There is a chapter covering the 'magic' functions (those functions that are build into library functions and are used behinds the scenes) and when you should use these functions to extend the power of python. Another chapter covers how to build into the code self testing routines so that if you modify any functions you can easily test that function. There is a chapter on how to understand library modules, how to use the built in documentation to find out quickly what a particular library or class will do.I spend only a small fraction of my time writing software at work (a little more at home for pleasure) and hence I do not hav the time to plough through the vast amount of documentation that exists for python so I read this book in small doses and each time find out something about the language (especially 2.2) that I did not know before. There is also very good advice on how to write good software.I am thinking of requiring all my programming staff (those who use python anyway) to stop work and spend a couple of days reading and making notes from this book.