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Beginning Python: From Novice to Professional
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.
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.
Not only is this a good book, it is also one of only few that cover Python 2.4. The author Magnus Lie Hetland has a free python tutorial ("minimal crash course) (Instant python) on his homepage. He was also involved (as author, editor etc.) in several other book projects:
So we can assume he has a clue what he is writing about.
His homepage uses PHP, btw.
Chriss
--
memomo.net - brush up your German, French, Spanish or Italian - online and free
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
we are the knights who say Ni!
Oh, sorry, wrong python
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
I hope this is not modded off topic. Here goes:
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.
Dvorak on Doomtech
Python seems to be devouring everything these days... even replacing Perl
From Dice.com
Python : 545 matches
Perl: 3809
C#: 3850
Ummm over 1/8 of the demand of Perl or C#
Java: 11856
Java+BEA: 621
So Python is smaller than one specific application servers development requirements.
Python is better than Perl, but in terms of devouring? Its like saying that American Football is devouring other sports around the world.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
It's licensed under the Creative Commons "Attribution-Share-alike" License, so feel free to pass it around if you want to.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
"And, unlike Perl, it's very easy to do complicated things in simple, legible code."
Perhaps it is time for you to get a perl book or take CS-101 course or something.
No it isn't. The AI scripts are. THe engine is C++.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
This must mean you aren't able to write legible Perl code. Perl has been making complicated things simple for more than a decade. If you don't know how to write clean code, then your Python will also suck.
It is a bit harder to be legible in Perl than in other languages, to be fair, especially if you use regexps (but then, they're not all that legible anyway to begin with). Still, you get used to it after a while and it becomes as easy to read Perl as any other language.
EXTERIOR: DAGOBAH--DAY
With Yoda strapped to his back, Luke climbs up one of the many thick vines that grow in the swamp until he reaches the Dagobah statistics lab. Panting heavily, he continues his exercises--grepping, installing new packages, logging in as root, and writing replacements for two-year-old shell scripts in Python.
YODA: Code! Yes. A programmer's strength flows from code maintainability. But beware of Perl. Terse syntax... more than one way to do it... default variables. The dark side of code maintainability are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you when code you write. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.
LUKE: Is Perl better than Python?
YODA: No... no... no. Quicker, easier, more seductive.
LUKE: But how will I know why Python is better than Perl?
YODA: You will know. When your code you try to read six months from now.
And, unlike Perl, it's very easy to do complicated things in simple, legible code
The issue with Perl isn't that it's particularly hard to do complicated things with simple, legible code (not more so than a lot of other languages, anyway), but that it's very, very easy to do something extremely quickly, which often - but not always - means code that makes sense at the time but isn't necessarily readable, or leads to overly terse code. Yes, Perl makes it easy to do things wrong (and a lot of people out there do use Perl to make unreadable programs), but that doesn't mean that it can't be used to do things correctly as well as any other language.
No discussion of Python literature can be complete without mentioning Mark Pilgrim's Dive into Python, which is an excellent way to get to know the Python language. It's free for download in a variety of formats. Two caveats however, being that 1) it hasn't been updated in about a year and a half and 2) it assumes that you already have a pretty good grasp of programming in some other language. But if you've you got some coding experience and want to take a serious look at what Python has to offer, this is a great book full of nice examples (with the code available for download as well).
After hacking perl for over 10 years, Python sounds very good. The first program I tried to write in Python was the quick-and-dirty thing I need most: Read a file and parse it using regexes. Perhaps I stumbled upon the one area where Perl shines in comparison with Python, for that is the impression I got. The Python regex methods do not seem a natural fit for the problem.
Since this is inevitable to pop up, a very simplyfied version (slightly offtopic):
Why not ditch Python and use Ruby (on Rails)?
Why better stick with Python?
Chriss
--
memomo.net - brush up your German, French, Spanish or Italian - online and free
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
No it isn't. The engine and the AI are written in C++. All of the game scripts (map generation for example) and interface is in python, all the game data is in XML, and it's highly modable.
The AI can be reprogrammed in C++ using their API. See Question 6. I'm not positive that it's been released yet though.
I've had good experiences with O'Reilly in general, and with "Learning *", "Programming *", and "* Cookbook", where * has been Python, Perl, PHP. However, have a look at http://python.oreilly.com/ and download the free chapters and source code before you buy. For an intermediate level programmer you can probably do without the "Learning Python" book. Good Luck.
Then again, I could be wrong.
I am a Java programmer by profession but I wanted to give Python a shot because it seemed like fun.
As a programmer experienced with OO programming and some other types of "scripting" languages, all I needed to read was Learning Python from O'Reilly. Great book, great language.
On a shameless side note, if you're a Scrabble fan, come check out my online, multiplayer Scrabble program written in Python. PyScrabble
For various reasons (more mature stdandard & third party libraries; English docs; real threading support -- this is a big one; etc) Python is a much better general-purpose language than Ruby.
(It's also about twice as fast, but honestly if Ruby is too slow for your project a factor of 2 probably isn't going to save you. Still, speed is a nice bonus.)
I suggest:
Good reading.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
I think the book thats most helpful to the novice programmer wouldn't be a book about any language at all.
It'd be a book about programming and algorithms in general. Its MUCH easier to root around in a 'hello world' program or the like if you understand things like loops, if/then/else statments, function calls, etc. Even the fundamental idea of declaring and using a variable.
Han shot first.
So can Perl.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Comparing to two for me is like comparing tree cutting with building houses.
When you build a house you need an architect and specific design rules so other people in the project can do their part. It takes a long time to build it, and someone has to live in the house a long time.
When you cut down a tree you're only interested in the fastest way possible to get it down safely. Who cares if it's pretty. If you didn't like the way the first one fell, you can make adjustments on the next.
A house builder wouldn't tell a woodcutter which axe to use. He doesn't care. Of course, woodcutters have no business building houses.
Personally? I like being a lumberjack. Nothing like fervorishly hacking away and yelling "TIMBER!" from a safe distance.
Run "pychecker" on your python scripts. It catches all sorts of things; certainly almost anything having to do with misspelling.
Since the start of the review is basically a flame against Perl, I can't resist making a plug for it--especially since it was the first serious programming language that I learned.
." On reading it, I knew this was for me. So, eventually I found out I had to download Perl, which I did, and then I started going through the tutorial. URL: http://www.sthomas.net/oldpages/roberts-perl-tutor ial.htm
If a programming language is sufficiently powerful, you won't become proficient in it overnight. For myself, I went through three stages: tutorial, hobby, profession.
It started with me back in 1999 when I wanted to learn HTML, and so I set out to learn it. But in the mean time, a friend of mine in the business told me that with Perl you could pretty much do anything you want in making web applications. At the time, I didn't know the difference between server-side and client-side scripting, and I figured, why not give it a try?
So I searched on the internet and found Robert's Perl Tutorial. The introduction says, "It assumes that the reader knows nothing of programming whatsoever. .
Going through the tutorial took me two or three weeks. After finishing it, I decided to try to make my nascient website cooler than it was by adding some server-side scripting. Now that I wasn't just in the tutorial anymore, I had to learn something about CGI. That's when I found the site "CGI Programming 101", http://www.cgi101.com/class/ (I'm pleased it is still around, too.) From this I learned the rudiments of CGI programming with Perl.
From this, I wrote a program called Article Master, which, had I stuck with developing it, could have been *the* killer-app blogging software instead of MovableType. (I'm sure there are probably 50,000 other geeks out there who also started out with something like this, discontinued development on it, and are still kicking themselves in the butt for missing out on coming out with the killer app.) In any case, after building the software and getting it to work kind of OK, I developed a deployment package for it and submitted it to an online Perl script archive. After submitting it, the archive gave me a free email address and access to the exclusive programming forums. The site sent me an email telling me I got these exclusive benefits because I was a programmer.
I had never thought of myself as a programmer, but here was a site brimming with programmers telling me I was one of them. It was such a positive boost for me that it encouraged me further to develop my skills.
Soon enough, I bought the Perl CD Bookshelf from O'Reily. Now, I had all the information and reference material I needed to write almost anything I wanted. I did some other personal online projects, and then, somehow I got the idea to try out getting a job using Perl. (This was at the beginning of 2000, just before the dot-com bust, so the entrance bar was set pretty low.) I called up a head-hunting agency and asked them if they needed someone who knew Perl. The agent on the other side said, "Get down here ASAP!" I went, I took their computerized test, and the results made him do backflips. (Hey, I knew what JAPH meant, and that was a question on the test!) He said he would have no problem getting me into a job, which he did. (And the money was more than I had ever dreamed of making.)
When I started, I got an assignment (all CGI development) from one of the other lead programmers, and he asked me how long the job might take me. I hesitated, and just before I was about to say "a few days", he asked if I could do this in a few hours. I said, "Yeah, OK." I asked him if there was an HTML tool they used, and I just got this blank stare. I learned quickly that real Perl programmers don't use HTML editors--like our Perl code, we type everything else by hand. I somehow rose to the occaision and got the job done in time. From t
As if python itself wasn't fun enough :)
This sig is intentionally left blank
Objects!
Perl == horrible bolted-on afterthought OO
Python == *much* better (real objects, finally!)
Ruby == pure heaven, everything is an object and iterable by default.
I was bored one day at home and recreated a class in ruby that I wrote at work in perl. Took me all day to do something in perl that it took about 1/2 an hour to do in ruby, and I added a couple of features as well. I also spent way more time looking up how to do stuff in perl that in ruby, event though I've programmed off and on in perl for years (a decade, in fact)....
If only "common" sense was actually that common...
In Perl, it is easy to make legible code, and it is easy to make illegible code.
In Python, it is easy to make legible code, but it is difficult to make illegible code.
That's because Perl is versatile, flexible. Python forces you to do things The Python Way(tm). I've tried Python a couple of times, and I keep going back to Perl. Maybe I'm just a rebel, but I don't like a language telling *me* what to do (queue "In Soviet Russia..." joke here).
And, yes, I mostly just hate the whitespace-as-blocking braindamage. It's like Guido loved LISP, but hated the braces, so he re-invented LISP, poorly. But that's why I love programming-- everybody gets to choose their favorite poison.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I don't think that it's harder at all to be legible in perl. It's just that unfortunately perl culture encourages illegibility. A great book that doesn't is Damian Conway's recent Perl: Best Practices. What a breath of fresh air to see someone say that perl ought to be legible. Sad to say I think that the things that brought perl to it's early prominence are also the things that have hurt it in the long run: the ability to do something complicated extremely quickly. Unfortunately this seems to have encouraged "clever" programmers, who use every clever perl trick in the book. All that cleverness has become part of perl culture.
Oddly enough I'm reading a book on Applescript right now (not because I really want to but because I need to write some fairly complicated scripts in it.) The book reminds me of perl in it's early days when it says how easy it is to do something or how Applescript magically does something for you, like understand whether you're in a string or math context. This seems good to beginners. But it the long run I think if lends itself to muddled code. There's just a little too much congratulations to each language for it's cleverness (and perl definitely is clever).
As far as Python goes god knows I tried to read either Programming or Learning Python but I just gave up. It just didn't hold my interest at all. Give me Java, or legible Perl any day!
. . . but if you are serious about maintainability then, to my mind, language enforced coding standards and a certain amount of "one right way to do it" has real value.
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.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I just burned through the flamewall on this issue not three days ago. I use Python instead of Perl, love Python best of all languages currently, and may even like the book reviewed. But it is superstitiously ignorant to declare any language makes it "easier" to program in. Can we just once have a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses and merits and demerits of any language at all, instead of talking about it like it was a laxative? "Makes the code soft and it flows out smoothly!" No, it doesn't: nothing does; hard programs are hard to write, easy programs are easy to write. I'll even save the time and copy my closing argument from last time:
I know a secret. It's a secret you only find out after programming for a while. It's one you obviously don't know if you ask me which programming language is the "easiest".
There is this public perception, unanimous in user-land, and even permeating to the very depths of Slashdot, which goes: "Computers are only hard because evil computer programmers deliberately set out to make them hard." And the secret is: that that's a falsehood. Computers are not made artificially difficult. It does no good to tell you this; this is a special kind of secret that you can only learn through experience.
The experience of struggling to design a usable user interface for your own system. The struggle to overcome the barriers of closed systems, lack of documentation, and misinformation everywhere you turn. The exasperation of dealing with users who come to you with the attitude that your program broke on purpose, you should fix it without knowing what the error was, and it's too hard to learn anyway because you make it difficult, because you're "evil".
Programming experience erases that mental line drawn between user and programmer. You get experience on both sides of the fence, and eventually you see that there is no such thing as artificial complication. Interfacing with a machine upon which we have taught electricity to think and where we hope to make it sing and dance for us is inherently complicated TO START WITH, and the various tools we use to perform our tasks - why, each and every one was written by average people like you and me who also sat down with a clean file and furrowed their brow and wondered "How can I do this? How can I make it so people will use it?"
No, you still have that mental mindset that there are programmers who deliberatly design things to be difficult, that it's all in spite, that they're laughing at you. Who, except as a joke, would deliberately make a programming language "hard to learn"? To fail at your task and blame your tool is simply a form of denial so that you don't have to face the fact that you have given up on trying to use something (no matter if it's COBOL or Javascript or Perl or freaking TECO, even!) that hundreds of other people have used successfully.
There is no "easy". There is no "hard". There is only "Task".
Now, you want to talk about an "easy" language? Binary, of course! Binary has just two commands (one and zero) so it's the fastest to learn, has cross-platform compatibility built-in (all computers know binary!), is easiest to test (no compiler or interpretter required, just "Rite 'n' Run"!), is readily available everwhere (ALL programs are "open source" in binary!), and needs no extension libraries (Binary can do it all!). If you thought this paragraph was stupid, this is how stupid the rest of you sound to me when you hyperfocus on "easy" and act like there's no other aspect to programming.