Customer Reviews

Python Essential Reference (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(53)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Intending to familiarize myself with Python, I picked up a copy of O'Reilly's Programming Python a couple of years ago. After an initial attempt at going through the book, it has been on my book shelf since. It was simply not organized in a fashion that allowed me to quickly pick up the essentials of the language.

As someone who was already familiar with C/C++ and Perl, but wanting to learn Python, the Python Essential Reference was exactly what I was looking for. Yes, most of the information contained in the book is available in the Python reference documents, but not collected in one place.

In addition to adding examples from his own experience, David Beazley has done an excellent job in concisely summarizing the built-in features of the language as well as providing a nicely indexed library reference.

While this book may not be immediately useful for someone looking specifically for a language tutorial, beginning or advanced Python programmers will get useful information from this book for much longer than most tutorial style books.

Highly recommended.

Firstly, ignore the review by Mr. Leopold. Despite the fact that that book is not intended as an introduction to the Python language, and mind you, this is stated repeatedly within the foreward and introduction, he seems to insist on treating it as such. Further, he can't seem to decide if he's reviewing the language or the book... All in all, a very poorly written review.

In any case, this is an excellent reference manual, suitable for Python hackers of all experience levels aside from complete newbie. As the sort that hates having a web browser open to sift through documentation, this reference is a godsend. The information presented is often terse, but quite clear.

The first 86 pages are a handy reference for the language itself. Being fairly familiar with Python already, I only skimmed over this section, but it seemed nicely organized.

The next big chunk of the book, the library reference, is nicely done as well. The modules are organized into sections based on general function (Math, OS Services). Each module name is listed in bold, and is followed by a quick list of platforms it is available on and a short description. After that, the authors rattle off the relevant details (classes, functions, variables, and so on) for each module. The classes and functions generally get the bold header with short paragraph description treatment. Everything else is typically listed in tables. This approach works surprisingly well, and though there are some cases where modules with large numbers of functions have them listed in a table, this is only done when it makes sense. A good example of this would be the math module, and its many (not surprisingly) math related functions such as sin, sqrt, and log.

All this is often followed with short examples, as well as a notes section that I have found surprisingly useful. The debugger and profiler are listed towards the end of the library section, and he does go into a bit more detail on those. Still, like the rest of the book, the sections on the debugger and profiler are intended only as a reference. I seem to remember the web pages having a short but helpful tutorial on using pdb and the profiler. Beginning and intermediate Python programmers will probably want to get started there.

He wraps up the book with a section on extending and embedding the language. This is not of particular interest to me, and I have only skimmed the section, but it seems to be fairly complete based on what (little) I know about the process.

Finally, we have the index. It maintains the level of quality established earlier in the book; I have, thusfar, had no problems finding what I was looking for. The index clearly lists each entry as a function, method, module, and so on. Clocking in at over 40 pages, it certainly does not lack due to a short length either.

If you want to learn Python, this isn't the book to do it with, though you'll certainly want to pick it up after you've gotten hold of the basics. If you've already got some experience with the language, I recommend it whole-heartedly.

Good points:

* Much-improved readability
The font, layout, etc. are all much better than in previous editions.

* Lengthy coverage of important modules
Especially: optparse, logging, doctest, and unittest.

* Excellent tutorial for programmers
This (chapter 1) is the best I've seen -- very clear and succinct. Give it to anyone wanting to pick up Python fast.

* Has all the necessities.
Good index, good explanations of language usage, etc. All standard modules are at least mentioned, and all useful ones are covered.


Bad points:

* Reference section says very little that is not in the Web docs
The Nutshell book documents each function of a module with an explanation of how to use it and what to watch out for. It often provides a useful example. Beazley, on the other hand, has mostly restated the web docs, which are free.

* Lacks future feature coverage
Previous editions of this book stated the version of Python covered on the cover. This book covers 2.4, but you have to open it to find that out. That would be a minor point, except that it has absolutely nothing about what to expect in 2.5. The Nutshell, on the other hand, claims to cover only one version but actually reveals a great deal of what to expect in the next. Beazley could have at least mentioned relative imports, return-from-yield, and anything deprecated.

* Important points can be difficult to find
I had to look in several places before I finally learned what ellipsis is for in slicing.


Summary:

This book does not add much value beyond the web docs. However, if you need a hard-copy reference for Python2.4, this is your only option, and it's not a bad one. It's very well-organized and very easy to read.

This excellent reference concisely covers the Python language and libraries. It is a model of what a reference should be: well-produced, tightly written, comprehensive without covering the obsolete or arcane. I even like the small type face.

Peter Leopold's pompous 'official' review is off the mark in a variety of ways. For instance, the reason there aren't comparisons to other languages is precisely that this is _reference_, not advocacy or tutorial.

Leopold's ill-tempered criticisms of the language itself are hardly relevant to the quality of the book; they also happen to be incorrect. Python _does_ support bytecode-only distribution. Python _is not_ a cleansed version of Perl. Python _is not_ only for quick and dirty projects.

Python _does_ provide the abstraction mechanisms and libraries to solve serious problems in a maintainable way, as long as execution efficiency isn't paramount.

If you're familiar with Python programming, and want a beautifully presented, concise reference, this is the book for you.

If you're new to Python, but experienced with C/C++ and perl, this book is a great way to pick up the Python sytax and libraries (love that Occam syntactic indenting!)

Beginners should try something like O'Reilly's "Learning Python", and pick up "Python Essential Reference" once they're familiar with the basics.

The author did a great job of including a ton of information in a clear and succinct reference. This is not a book that will teach a newbie all about programming. However, it is perfect for those that have at least some programming experience, whether in Python or some other language, and need a reference while coding in Python.
For those new to the language who find themselves wondering "How do I do that in Python?", the first chapter includes a short (11 page) tutorial that demonstrates using:
- Variables
- Conditionals
- File I/O
- Strings
- Lists & Tuples
- Loops
- Dictionaries
- Functions
- Classes
- Exceptions
- Modules
The tutorial section is nice while getting up to speed with Python's syntax.
The rest of the book goes into a bit more detail on rest of the Python's language features with the exception of some of the more inconspicuous ones. Most of the "raw" information in the book is available on python.org or other online resources, but with the book you get that same information filtered through the author's Python experience plus a lot of concise examples. I've found that what is not covered in this book is better answered by searching the related mailing list archives.
As with the other New Riders programming books I own, this one is indexed well, making it easy to find what I am looking for. Also, the size of the book is small enough that it fits nicely in my briefcase and on my desktop.
It appears that a lot of thought went into both the content of the book as well as the overall design of the reference, that's why I've given it the highest rating.

Dave Beazley's done the Python community a huge service by condensing and extending the Python online documentation into a concise, readable and easily portable format. There is simply no other book on the market that comes close--and certainly not the abominable Programming Python.

This book will help you in whatever hacking you're doing with Python--and there's a really nice section on extending and embedding Python. I've already been more than repaid by this title.

Forget what Peter Leopold (Amazon.com's review) so pretentiously says. The whole point of this beautiful baby is that it gives you the essential information and not the hernia of evangelizing that books like Programming Python do.

If Richard Stevens had written a book on Python, it would have looked a lot like Dave Beazley's.

I keep this book on my in reach book shelf. An excellent concise one book reference to the Python language. That alone would be worth the price of the book but the inclusion of appendices documenting the standard library and extending and embedding Python make it a bargain.

This book is probably the most useful book you will find about Python.

The first 95 pages provide a very well written and well structured tutorial and overview of the Python language. Although not intended as an introduction for beginners, anybody with sound programming skills and experience in another object oriented language would find it readable. For someone with a small amount of experience in Python, this is an excellent read with great examples and clear explanations of all the Python constructs. Beazley also covers some other interesting areas like 'Performance and Memory Considerations'

The next 200 pages form a detailed reference for the Python Library. While not covering the complete Python Library (which is ever changing), the author has taken time to provide clear new examples for the most useful of these functions. Only the very obscure functions are missing and this reference should prove useful to any Python programmer.

The last 30 pages cover the topic of Extending and embedding Python. This section is for the advanced user only and will probably only prove useful if you intend to integrate C and Python applications.

The book is well written, and well presented, with excellent examples throughout.

If I could have just one Python book while writing Python on desert island, this would be the book.

My copy just arrived from Amazon. First thing I noticed was the quality production (paper, type setting, layout, ...) and the font - a point or two smaller than I expected (bucking the trend to inflate books with a font I can read across the room).

The Index is 45 some pages (distinguised by a grey edge), using a mix of bold and regular font to make headings and subheadings easily distinguished. The page numbers are clear in the upper left corner of each page, making it easy to fan back to the indexed page. The paper was cut to leave a perfectly smooth and even right edge, so thumbing to a desired page is quick and accurate. And for each thing I've looked up so far, the result was right on, terse, but clearly written by someone aware and experienced and just what I might need.