Dive Into Python 3 (Books for Professionals by Professionals) [Paperback]

Mark Pilgrim (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 23, 2009 | ISBN-10: 1430224150 | ISBN-13: 978-1430224150 | Edition: 2

Mark Pilgrim's Dive Into Python 3 is a hands-on guide to Python 3 and its differences from Python 2. As in the original book, Dive Into Python, each chapter starts with a real, complete code sample, proceeds to pick it apart and explain the pieces, and then puts it all back together in a summary at the end.

This book includes:

• Example programs completely rewritten to illustrate powerful new concepts now available in Python 3: sets, iterators, generators, closures, comprehensions, and much more
• A detailed case study of porting a major library from Python 2 to Python 3
• A comprehensive appendix of all the syntactic and semantic changes in Python 3

This is the perfect resource for you if you need to port applications to Python 3, or if you like to jump into languages fast and get going right away.

What you’ll learn

• To understand Python 3 code by seeing it broken down and explained
• How to make full use of the latest Python features such as iterators, generators, closures, classes and comprehensions
• How to refactor existing code to improve maintainability
• How to serialize Python objects with the pickle protocol and JSON format
• How to package your own Python libraries and upload them to the Python Package Index to share your projects with Python developers worldwide
• How to use Python 3 to consume HTTP web services
• How to port existing Python applications to Python 3 by following a case study for a major library

Who this book is for

• Anyone who wants to learn the latest version of Python in a fast, hands-on fashion
• Existing Python programmers who want to learn quickly how to make the most of the features of the latest version of Python and port their code to it
• Programmers coming from other languages wanting a fast introduction to Python that gets them thinking about advanced concepts quickly

Table of Contents

1. Your First Python Program
2. Native Datatypes
3. Comprehensions
4. Strings
5. Regular Expressions
6. Closures and Generators
7. Classes and Iterators
8. Advanced Iterators
9. Unit Testing
10. Refactoring
11. Files
12. XML
13. Serializing Python Objects
14. HTTP Web Services
15. Case Study: Porting chardet to Python 3
16. Packaging Python Libraries

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

By day, Mark Pilgrim is a developer advocate for open source and open standards. By night, he is a husband and father who lives in North Carolina with his wife, his two sons, and his big slobbery dog. He spends his copious free time sunbathing, skydiving, and making up autobiographical information.

Product Details

• Paperback: 360 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 2 edition (October 23, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430224150
• ISBN-13: 978-1430224150
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 0.8 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #805,772 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 40 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars good content, but poorly produced physical book March 25, 2010

By ErikB

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I came to this book after slogging through 200pgs of the tome that is Learning Python and getting nowhere. Dive into Python 3 is a more reasonable size, and from reading a few of the chapters online at [...], I felt that Mark Pilgrim had done a good job of writing a Python introduction. I would probably rate the content as 4 or 5 stars.

I was happy enough that I wanted to buy the physical printed edition of the book, to have as a reference and to support the author. I was expecting that the content had been professionally reformatted for book form, with suitable typeface selection and reflowed text. However, I was sorely disappointed when I received my printed copy. It would appear that SoHo Books has done nothing but take the PDF from Mark Pilgrim's site and printed it. I might not mind, except that this was done very poorly. I immediately noticed that the typeface was small, sans-serif, and worst, dithered! The letters are drawn with small,fine dots as if this were printed on an old dot-matrix printer. The result is unlike any other printed book I have, and I consider this unacceptable. The fonts in the PDF appear to be vector drawn when I scale it, and thus SoHo has no excuse for not doing a cleaner job of scaling the pages down. And that's all they did: take pages formatted for 8.5" x 11" and scale them down to about 5.5" x 7" or so. Further, they wastefully left 1.75" of dead white space on top and 1.5" on the bottom.

This cheap printing is a shameful waste of a tree, when it could have been done really well. I would have a much higher quality version if I had printed it on my own printer. I thank the author for licensing his work with the Creative Commons license, but I'm sad to report that I'll be returning this print version. I'll hold out hope that these problems could be corrected for future printings.

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book with which to start October 3, 2009

By calvinnme HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Python now comes in two flavors--Python 3 and Python 2. The philosophy of programming in Python 3 diverges from Python 2 to the point that print statements written in three don't even run properly in two. Unfortunately, so many of the books written using Python over the last few years are still using version 2.6 - which is backwards compatible with all previous versions. If you are buying this book because you are taking a class in which the teacher is using Python rather than teaching it -bioinformatics or visualization for example - this may cause you trouble. If you need to learn 2.6 or an earlier version of Python 2, please buy the previous edition.

If you are learning Python for the first time and it's up to you as to what flavor of Python to learn, then I suggest you start with Python 3. It does fix some longtime problems with the Python language. In that case, this edition of "Dive Into Python" is what you want.

I tend to learn languages more readily if I write a simple program first then add to its complexity by having more complex aspects of the language revealed to me, which is basically the approach of "Dive Into Python". What worked best for me when I learned Python 2 was to read the free online guide "Dive Into Python" which is incomplete but top-down, then switch to "Learning Python", which is detailed but more academic and more of a bottom-up approach. For example, while this book is about 500 pages, the new "Learning Python" book by Mark Lutz is 1200 pages long.

The author of this book has continued his tradition of placing his book online free of charge if you wish to look through it. I have read this updated version in order to update to Python 3. However, the author realizes that if you like his book you'll want a copy for yourself to carry about and in which to scribble notes. Sometimes you can make more money by being generous.

In summary, I highly recommend this book as a way to get started, but then you'll probably want to proceed to "Learning Python" for advanced topics and as a reference.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars *very* poor print quality July 17, 2010

By J. Hopson

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

The print quality of this book is awful. My copy looks like it was printed on a cheap inkjet printer. The print is tiny. Really tiny. And the top and bottom margins are 1-3/8" each! Seriously, is this a joke?

This book probably has some great content, but the print quality is so bad it's worthless.