Learning Python: Powerful Object-Oriented Programming [Paperback]

Mark Lutz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 9, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0596158068 | ISBN-13: 978-0596158064 | Edition: 4th

Google and YouTube use Python because it's highly adaptable, easy to maintain, and allows for rapid development. If you want to write high-quality, efficient code that's easily integrated with other languages and tools, this hands-on book will help you be productive with Python quickly -- whether you're new to programming or just new to Python. It's an easy-to-follow self-paced tutorial, based on author and Python expert Mark Lutz's popular training course.

Each chapter contains a stand-alone lesson on a key component of the language, and includes a unique Test Your Knowledge section with practical exercises and quizzes, so you can practice new skills and test your understanding as you go. You'll find lots of annotated examples and illustrations to help you get started with Python 3.0.

Learn about Python's major built-in object types, such as numbers, lists, and dictionaries Create and process objects using Python statements, and learn Python's general syntax model Structure and reuse code using functions, Python's basic procedural tool Learn about Python modules: packages of statements, functions, and other tools, organized into larger components Discover Python's object-oriented programming tool for structuring code Learn about the exception-handling model, and development tools for writing larger programs Explore advanced Python tools including decorators, descriptors, metaclasses, and Unicode processing

Editorial Reviews

Review

As a book for programmers who want to learn Python, it does a very good job. The coverage is informative and well order; making it easy to find what you're looking for. Overall, if you do some work with Python, you will benefit from owning this book. " - Sam Smith, news@UK, March "This book is a good example of Python culture, in the clarity of its text as much as in the quality of its code. Anyhone working their way through it will have a solid foundation upon which to explore Python's potential. Highly recommended." - Ivan Uemilianin, CVu, October 2004 --Ivan Uemilianin, CVu, October 2004 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Mark Lutz is the world leader in Python training, the author of Python's earliest and best-selling texts, and a pioneering figure in the Python community since 1992. He is also the author of O'Reilly's Programming Python, Python Pocket Reference, and Learning Python (all in 4th Editions). Mark can be reached on the web at www.rmi.net.

Product Details

• Paperback: 1216 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 4th edition (October 9, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596158068
• ISBN-13: 978-0596158064
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 2.1 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #182,474 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #76 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Languages & Tools > Python

More About the Author

Mark Lutz is the world leader in Python training, the author of Python's earliest and best-selling texts, and a pioneering figure in the Python community since 1992. Mark can be reached on the web at www.rmi.net.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

79 of 84 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The book I wish I started with September 14, 2011

By Christopher G. Loverich

Format:Paperback

I avoided purchasing this book initially due to the length and negative reviews posted here. In hindsight this was a huge mistake. Here are some points to consider.

1. This is NOT a book for experiencd programmers. This is a book for novices who want to learn programming using the python language. If your coming from another language, try Mark Pilgrim's Dive into Python 3 or a python cookbook. If you are wanting to do something specific, find a topic focused introduction - e.g. Natural Language Processing with Python.

2. The length of the book is from the conversational explanations. Yes it is longer than, say, Mark Summerfield's Python 3: A Complete Introduction. But I can tell you from experience, it reads much, much faster. I find myself FLYING through this book, without having to re-read things seventeen times just to understand what is going on. Keep that in mind.

3. Most of the example code is very simple. Some have complained about this, but there is a very, very big advantage that is overlooked by most of these people - it is very easy to jump around to different sections and not feel lost. I tried doing that in another book and ran into "Remember the 100 lines-of-code example we started 3 chapters ago? We'll continue on with that to show how x function works." No thanks - I just want an explanation of function x please.

4. This book is focused (mostly) on Python 2. If your just starting out, Python 2 is what you need as of August 2011. Most 3rd party libraries and tools still work mostly (or exclusively) with python 2, and it will likely continue to be this way for some time (ex: Django does not support python 3 yet).... Don't make my mistake and assume if you know Python 3 you will be able to convert to 2 when needed - the converse is much more practical. If you dont specifically need something from python 3, it doesn't make sense to learn it right now.

5. This book is probably too big to carry around with you day-to-day. That being said, you can always upgrade to an e-book version from O'reilly at significant discount when you already own the physical book (5 bucks I think).

With that in mind, this may or may not be the right book to start with. If not, consider:
1. Learn Python the Hard Way - if you like a hands on approach, with examples that build on prior ones
2. Dive into Python 3 - if you are already have programming experience
3. Python 3: A Complete Introduction - if you want a thorough treatment of Python 3, and have programming experience. Read more ›

106 of 115 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Wordy and disappointing for such a well regarded text. May 23, 2010

By Blue Cat

Format:Paperback

This book will teach you Python if you have a lot of patience and are willing to wade through many pages of text to get information. The author wastes a lot of ink stating things like "I'll introduce you to topic XYZ, but you will have to wait until a later chapter to go into detail." Or introducing a topic and then declaring it is outside the books (1216 page) scope. Here's an example from page 85:

"Text pattern matching is an advanced tool outside this book's scope, but readers with backgrounds in other scripting languages may be interested to know that to do pattern matching in Python, we import a module called re."

Pattern matching is a critical feature of any scripting language. I was surprised to see such an important topic thrown away.

The book is divided into sections. I've put page counts and a summary description of the content to further describe the glacial pace of the book:

Part 1: Getting Stared: Pages 1- 72

72 pages to tell you how to run a Python program.

Part 2: Types and Operations 73-258

186 pages to introduce Python types (strings, numbers, sequences, etc)

Page 3: Statements and Syntax - 259-392

If statements are not introduced until Part3.

At this point I gave up and started reading the online tutorial.

61 of 69 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Too much spam; not enough real food to chew on. July 7, 2010

By ErikTrips

Format:Paperback

I am only about a quarter of the way through this volume, and I am fairly certain that this is the worst O'Reilly book I have ever encountered. Most of their beginning programming books I have found quite useful, usually providing exercises that help me to think more like a programmer and get a feel for what sorts of things the code I am learning can do. This book, however, will have you printing endless, monotonous variations of "spam spam eggs and spam" at a prompt. I am quite fine with the occasional reference to where Python got its name, but the author of this book seems to think it an excuse not to bother coming up with any real code or problems that one might try to solve with code. I have even looked ahead to the advanced topics section, and the examples are still relying on printing permutations of spam, eggs, and the number 42 to "demonstrate" functions, methods, and even classes.

There are no exercises in this book at all. There are only the barest hints as to what one might use Python for. Each feature is trotted out, given some variation of "spam" or 42 to work on (if you're lucky, maybe you'll get 42.0: a float!), and then the reader is told to consult the Python documentation and "experiment." That's it. No suggestions as to what direction you might like to go with your experiments. Beginning programmers will find very little that will help them to write useful code here. I know enough about programming to know how some of the constructs being mindlessly presented might be used in the real world, but I will probably not continue using this book to learn Python. I would not recommend it to anyone: there is not enough information about the nuts and bolts of programming for a beginner.... As someone who has coded a few actual applications, I simply find the endless stream of spam and eggs so mind-numbing that I cannot come up with my own practice problems. This is a book without an audience; I can't even believe the author enjoyed writing it. Read more ›

39 of 46 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Really bad ! June 20, 2010

By Ender Aydin Orak

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I believed that so many people that write good reviews can not be wrong. But I was wrong, as everybody that write good reviews :)

First of all, I think author of the book has a prioritization and ordering issue. Any programming book that especially written for beginners has an ordering (data types, statements, expressions, collections etc.), but author mentions about every issue that comes in his mind regardless of being in an irrelevant chapter. For example, while mentioning about data structures in first chapter (and I think it should be a later issue), he mentions about operator overloading and garbage collection. And I think he can not handle the differences between Python 2.6 and 3.0 in a clear and tidy way. Expressing every difference between each release on every expression, structure or definition causes losing the focus on the real information. I prefer he would write the whole book on Python 3.0, cause anybody that buys this book now on would probably use Python 3.0 instead 2.6, and express really important differences on 2.6 in a separate section on each chapter for people that interested with them.

This book is really hard to read from start to the end. It immediately ruin your focus on the real subject with mentioning different and not so useful topics at that moment. I really tried it, but I couldn't continue to read and practice above 45 minutes.

I decided to continue with another book, and really do not recommend this book for anyone wants to learn Python.