Customer Reviews

Making Use of Python

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I borrowed this book from a library and have never used it, because I have not found anything useful in it. I am an advanced software developer who just recently discovered Python. However, I cannot tell how useful this book would be to a beginner. Maybe it is of some use but there are better books than this one.

I just made a few attempts to find some useful information in it and never suceeded. Either I could not find it or the stuff which I found was inaccurate and incomplete.

One example: I was looking for access modes to be used when reading or writing files. I found a table containing the access modes and their descriptions. To my surprise I realized that there were different codes with nearly identical descriptions, like:
r+ Opens a file for both reading and writing
w+ Opens a file for both writing and reading.
Nowhere in this book could I find some more detailed information and explanation of the difference.

I have two other books on Python which I like very much and recommend them both:

- Python Visual Quickstart Guide by Chris Fehily, for beginners
- Python 2.1 Bible by D. Brueck and S.Tanner, for intermediate programmers.

Do not buy this book.

I am an application developer in Python, so I have high expectations of a book on that language. This treatment was incomplete (no list comprehensions!) and fragmented. Many of the chapters are full of filler instead of useable information. The examples use a poor coding style and look like the programmer was trying to code C++ or Basic. There are a lot of technical errors, too. If you are serious about learning this language you best figure out how to use the Language Reference Manual and Library Reference Manual that are available on the Python web site. Sorry to give such a negative review, but I don't appreciate having my time wasted.

THE GOOD:

I read this book cover-to-cover in a week. It's a small book (300 pages) and a quick read for an experienced programmer. I liked the format of the book as well. It uses a fictitious storyline where you and the author are trying to build a website for "Techsity University".

The overall quality of editing was decent, but it could have been a lot better. I found at least 10 editorial mistakes, including a paragraph repeated verbatim right after it was stated. Yet, I found only one mistake where the code was incorrect in the whole book, which is a huge plus, as I hate finding bugs in an author's code when I am learning the language from them.

THE BAD:

The coverage of method overriding was confusing, despite the fact I knew what the author was saying. I can easily imagine someone who does not know what method overriding is being extremely confused by this section of the book.

It's not that the overall book is confusing, because, at times, the author makes stellar points. The problem is that the quality of the writing is not consistent and can vary greatly from topic to topic, and sometimes varies greatly within a single example. For instance, the coverage of CGI programming uses antiquated HTML style and generally looks like HTML written in the 1990s.

In addition, the book does not really discuss the "Pythonic Way" to write things. This, I feel, is the greatest shortcoming of the book, since it seems to be targeted toward experienced programmers who are familiar with concepts like polymorphism and inheritance. While form should never come before substance, Python programmers believe there is a canonical way to do any task in Python. This belief is seems so engrained in the Python community that I am surprised the author did not bring it up.

There are also some technical errors in places. For instance, when the author is describing the MySQLdb module, she says that close() will close a connection to a database. This is not true. It only closes the cursor. A database connection will be trivially closed when the object is no longer in used.

Finally, this book is not for beginners! The book does not contain any exercises, so it is probably not appropriate for someone looking to learn programming. For that, I recommend Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science.

Overall, the book does not have a suitable audience. Experienced programmers probably will want a book that focus on the "Pythonic Way" presentational angle, while beginners will want exercises to test their comprehension of new concepts.

When I picked up this book, I didn't realize what a powerful, multipurpose language Python is. This book really opened my eyes to the many development tasks that Python can help with. And the task-oriented approach was easy to follow. An extremely worthwhile read.

This book offers a great, quick introduction to the basic features of Python. It showed me what Python is best used for and helped me get started using it right away.