Customer Reviews

Python: Visual QuickStart Guide (2nd Edition)

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

 

 

I've been hearing a lot about Python, its excellent syntax, and myriad of uses, so I decided to look for something to introduce me to the language. I ended up picking up Python: Visual QuickStart Guide because it's a light read and comes at a bargain bin price.

The book is written from the perspective that you're a complete beginner at Python. However, this tone makes a lot less sense as you go through the book; the book's examples seem to exist purely to demonstrate how the language's syntax looks. Indeed, there is very little practical application of anything you will learn from this book. It goes into minimal detail, and often what explanation it does offer is useless.

On the plus side, it is one of the first books on the shelves for Python 3. Anyone looking for a quick way to get up to date on Python 3 won't be disappointed. There's even a handy appendix highlighting the differences between Python 2 and Python 3. However, anyone just beginning Python who is looking for a comprehensive walkthrough of the language is going to be disappointed by this book. It amounts to little more than a syntax reference. I've read this book all the way through, and while I understand most of the language's syntax, I still have zero ability to build a Python application for any use. Many of the more in-depth features the book only mentions briefly, and usually only to tell you to check the official Python documentation online for more information, which to the beginner is absolutely useless since the official docs are highly technical and oriented toward a developer.

If you're looking for a book that's going to walk you through Python step by step, this is not your book. Not only is it about 180-pages light, but the text only takes up about half the page for some reason and it's a small sized book. There's less content in 180-pages of this book than there is in the first 60 of other programming books I own. It's a quick read and a great way to get started with Python and its basic syntax. However, taking your abilities further is best left to other, more complete books.

I purchased this book when it came out because I was very interested in learning Python version 3.0. I previously had read the Quick Start for HTML and JavaScript and had high hopes for this book. However, it seemed as though the author downloaded the free python documents, picked some various topics and copy and pasted them into his book as a desk reference. I do give credit that the author uses more of the main stream syntax but doest really provide guidance for application use. The author also fails to explain a lot of the syntax at times which forced me to download the documents from [...]. Therefore I cant recommend this for beginning programmers. Save your money, download the documents at [...], and go to Office Depot or Staples and print out what you need.

A decent enough primer. Python is fun language to work with and this primer gets you going fast.

I pretty much did some lessons online before I bought this (Bucky on youtube and one from upriss on google.. both fine). Anyway, it explains alot of syntax and is a good primer. Having said that, it would be hard to understand WTF all that is useful for without written some code. Having said THAT, the code you do get to mess with towards the end especially is bad and does not work.... lol.... which in turn made me think and fix it and taught me more. Sweet and sour I guess :P Anyway, this was an ok python primer and am probably jumping into Python 3 OOP and other stuff now. This book explained alot of things pretty well... Ive read worse! Have atleast some experience with python, not much, but a little :P

This is actually a very easy to read little text, packing a lot of information into a very small text. Highly recommended!