Customer Reviews

Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner, Second Edition

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I actually started with the O'reilly books and they are great, but if your new to programming/scripting, this book is a better place to start. It will get you up and running with Python fast. yeah, its easy, but I think that's the point (hence the title "Absolute Beginners"). The exercises are fun and get the concepts across very well. If you've mastered other languages, go with O'reilly. if you are new to coding start with this book.

I have been using this to teach my nephew Python. It is a great place to start as it gets very quickly to something visual to keep kids interested, while at the same time covering lots of useful ideas and concepts. If you want to show a beginner how quickly they can actually produce a real game with their own flavor on it, this is the book.

This is a good first book on programming for a junior high school kid or a motivated elementary school kid.

If you are a programmer looking to learn the Python language, this book is not for you. It's not intended to be for you, and you will find it slow-paced and tedious. Instead, as its title says, it's for people who want to learn to program, and Python is the weapon of choice for this author. I'm a long-time professional software guy, and I bought this book as a possible tutorial for my kids. It is pretty amazingly good for that. The sample programs are realistic enough. They're also short enough that someone can type them in as they go along. The author takes the reader all the way from "no experience required" all the way through OOP. Each step is gentle and encouraging. Along the way, the author points out what is a requirement and what is just convention. Computer jargon is explained in comfortable terms for the beginner.

I am a musician who is using Python for various small to large projects. I find it to be the easiest, fastest way to get useful results. Of the six books I've read, this one is the best introduction to programming with Python that I've used. Others are more complete in their coverage, but none are more fun. If your interest in programming is limited to creating useful scripts easily and in a hurry, Python is for you. And this book is the best to show you how.

Important update 2008-4-23 to review below: I sent the author an email through his website, and within 3 hours he had emailed back to me the modified software I needed. Yes, I still think he should have that software posted on his website, but his quick response certainly helped me out of the trouble I was in!


My daughter is using this book to learn to program for her class project, and the CD is at school. Meanwhile, I am trying to set up the same environment for her on our home computer, which is a Mac. So I got my python up-to-date, installed Pygame, no problem, then for her to do the examples in Chapter 11 on graphics, she needs the livewires package. Only then I encounter the "TRAP" on page 330 - the livewires package on the CD that comes with the book is a modified version of the livewires package available on the web. And the example programs do not work with the standard livewires release. And the book does not give source code differences for the modified package, nor is the modified package available on the author's website or anywhere else I can find (although this entire chapter is available on-line as an assignment for a computer science course, making me feel foolish for buying the book). So I am left unable to create the programming environment at home to match what's in this book. This situation is directly against the portability/openness philosophy of Python, and is causing me a lot of trouble. Mr. Dawson should have stuck with stock, publicly-available packages as the platform for his instructional text. Failing that, he should have tried to get his changes incorporated into a livewires release. Failing that, he should distribute the modified livewires himself via the internet (livewires is BSD-licensed itself), since it is easy for book and CD to become separated, and the book is much less valuable without his own private version of livewires. If you lose the CD, you'll never be able to run his example code in the text of chapters 11 and 12. "TRAP" indeed!

This is a good book to get a beginner hooked on programing.
I don't care for the IDLE, (edit environment provided on CD),
but the text is concise and the subject material is not
obfuscated with unnecessary deflections, if you know what I
mean. I purchased another copy for my children, if it stimulates a
curiosity, to experiment with software, in anyone of them I'll
petition Amazon to add another star.

This book is perfect for the beginner programmer. Whether you have prior experience or not, you will come away with useful information and valuable experience. I have read it through once, and am now going back through and working on the sample code you develop. I have never had so much fun, nor have I ever found a book that did a better job of being informative but not too much. He works you from Hello World to a simple but graphic game, teaching you Python, programming convention and how to apply what you have learned to several types of situations. I cannot say how much I love this book, or how great it has been to finally find an author who can get the job done. Five stars, only because that's the highest I can give!

I bought this book as a requirement for my university level beginning programming class. The book is great! It has easy step by step instructions and creates an environment that is easy to follow along with using your own computer.

I recommend this book for anybody looking to learn the basics of Python programming!

I'm new to programming, python is my first language to learn. This book does a good job on getting the beginner started in programming, however it does not go into to much detail and the book does jump around a lot. But as i said it is a good book for the absolute beginner, but if you want to go in to detail and understand things better i would recommend a different book.

I'm new to the programming world, i took my first programming course last semester and it was in Python, and this was the book that everyone was required to have. Therefore this review is written by someone just learning how to program for the first time, an absolute beginner(sorry i couldn't resist) so if that's you, hopefully this review will help.

First things first, i bought 'Python, Programming for the Absolute Beginner, Second Edition' one month before classes started to get a head start and was surprised at how well i was picking up the programming concepts in the book. Some of the main points the book touches on, i'm not going by any particular order...
-If, elif, else structures
-While loops
-For loops
-Functions
-Classes
-GUI's and everything that entitles
These are just some of the topics it goes into detail explaining with very helful examples. It's also filled with a tone of common knowledge that you'll need to know if you're planning on entering the program scene.

The book comes with a cd which has all the source code you need to start programming(i had to download an updated version of Python later in the semester at www.python.org, not a big deal). Thanks to this book the first month or so of class flew by because of the head start i had. Once things started to get tricky in class, I found myself referring to this book more and more, which is always a good thing. I highly recommend it for beginner programmers, it was very helpful.