Customer Reviews

The Quick Python Book

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Excuse my enthusiasm, but this is one of the best software books I've ever read and I've been programming professionally for 16 years. I wanted to learn Python as a replacement for Perl so I bought all the O'Reilly books, which were OK but too chatty and disorganized for my taste. I picked up Quick Python and found myself reading it like a bestseller and I still reread it. I was amazed at its consistent clarity, depth and friendliness with lots of tight examples in a visually pleasing format. The authors don't just cover the material, they also let you in on the subtleties and gotchas that go unmentioned in a reference like Beazley's Python Essential Reference (which I also own but for me Quick Python works better most of the time).

Furthermore in order to explain Python well, the authors provide astute explanations of general programming topics such as exception handling, regular expressions, and the pros and cons of the current crop of popular programming languages. They also bring in experts, even Guido Van Rossum (the creator of Python), to write chapters on more advanced topics like JPython and Zope.

My only caveat is that this is not the best place for beginners to start--Lutz & Ascher's Learning Python would be better--but it is a good book for beginners to own and dip into as they develop.

Other reviewers have mentioned that Quick Python's coverage of Tkinter (the main Python GUI package) is thin and that's true, though somewhat understandable since Tkinter is quite a beast and whole books have been written that don't cover Tkinter or Tk all that well. I would dearly love to see Harms & McDonald bring their accessible, thorough-going approach to Tkinter and its extension, Python Megawidgets.

(Please note this is written for the "second corrected printing 2000" which is a great improvement over earlier printings.)

Easy to get into, requires some previous knowledge of programming. Written in a clear, conversational style with good examples the reader can follow along with interactively.

Introduction grounds the reader with some background, and a comparison between python and other languages which includes a section on types of applications python is and is not ideally suited for.

Covers essentials including control structures, data structures, exceptions, and using the filesystem from within applications. From there, scoping, functions, classes, modules, and packages are explained to demonstrate how to break up your application into logical pieces. Also covered: GUI development using Tk and alternatives.

The final 200 pages comprises an advanced topic section and an excellent 50 page reference, as well as a well-organized and cross-referenced index that has proved consistently useful.

Highlights of Advanced Topics:

* Differences between scripting on Unix vs Windows, including how to make your scripts completely cross-platform

* JPython, including using JPython from Java

* Using Zope (popular open source application server/portal toolkit written in and extendable using Python)

* Extending Python with C and C++

* Using Python with COM

* Python and CGI; HTML generation

The book lives up to its title. You should be able to start using python after you read through the core language features, and this should take only a few days (about 200 pages).

The book contains many code examples. This is a strength of the book, since the examples together with their analyses really help clarify the concepts.

The remainder of the book discusses advanced topics and advanced languages features. This part of the book is a very good overview of what python can do in real world projects.

The appendix contains a quick reference guide which I found very useful.

The overall appearance of the book is outstanding. The choice of typefaces makes the book very readable. Margin notes are provided which makes it easy to locate a topic or to quickly review the essential elements of a chapter.

The book contains a large number of errata, but most are quite easy to spot. An errata sheet is available.

Despite the errors in the text, I still give the book a high rating. It's the type of book I want to keep close at hand when I'm writing python code.

A useful, inspiring textbook, and with for a computer book good font choices, so that one really likes to open it. It has a lot of typoos which is bothering, but it is good enough to let the author still pass. The reference at the end of the book is particularly useful, because modules and their methods are presented in an order, so that one finds them, when one needs them. I think the book starts entry level and guides quite high up. Still it's not all encompassing: For instance one needs extra material for XML programming and so on. But there are further books, like "XML Processing with Python", "Python Programming on Win32" or the best Python reference ever: "Python essential Reference" published by New Rider, all to get on amazon dot com, of course. When I have to recommend a Python book to a newcommer, and I also want, that he will become good fast, then he'll get this quick Python book. (And I have proof, that it works:-).

First, a word about myself - retired scientist (almost 70) who has been doing computer science since 1956, and dabbling in theoretical physics and electrical engineering since about 1950. I suddenly needed to integrate INTUIT and MICROSOFT products to to do a job without human intervention in order to meet needs for audit. Since I have worked mainly in UNIX since 1972 or so, and in LINUX since Yggdrasil. This was a challenge. I bought several books, and found that this one, and "The Quick Python Book" allowed me to learn the language well enough start system planning in a couple of days, and I expect to become fluent in the language shortly.

Why is this true? First because of the skill Guido van Rossum used to make the language expressive, and yet orthogonal and regular (unlike natural language such as English or German), and second (this being most important to the book's usefulnees) the outstanding skills of both authors as teachers, and as writers. I do not think I have learned so quickly and easily from a computer science book since the classic by Kernighan and Plauger. There really is not much more to say. Because I am not yet a fluent user of the language, I do not know enough to recognise errors of detail (if there are many or any). But the book achieves its object of teaching a great deal about a powerful and useful language, without using too few words, or too many, while continuing to hold my interest, and not wasting my time.

If the reader has no previous experience with computer languages or with programming, then another offering from Amazon, teaching PYTHON for hobbyists and others, is more suitable. However, I would not hesitate to say that PYTHON is a suitable first programming language for young people who have a mentor.

If extensive use of the enormous number of PYTHON libraries is contemplated, then a roadmap to their capabilities is needed in addition, such as "The Python Handbook" and, of course the volumes of documentation distributed with PYTHON are needed, but only as a last resort before examination of the source, if the written material becomes confusing.

I am sure that there are others who learn in ways different from mine, and they will have different preferences. But I doubt that any reader with this book in hand, a PYTHON interpreter running at their keyboard and display, and some reasonable understanding of what software really is, will take very long to become a productive member of a team who are using PYTHON.

I just got this book, so I can't offer a full review yet, but I have one comment, & I'm not really sure if it's good or bad. The book is full of errors, many of which are fairly obvious. That's VERY bad. On the other hand, it's errata sheet (available on the publisher's web site) is quite hefty, so presumably they've gone through & corrected most of them. That's good, but decent pre-publication proofing would have caught most of the errors. If nothing else, this makes me very suspicious of future Manning titles, whose authors might not make the same effort to correct their errors.

As far as the content goes, it does seem like an excellent book so far. Very code heavy, with just quick commentary necessary to explain the concepts. The layout is a bit busy for my tastes, but I suspect that I'll get used to that as I read more.

I checked out this book plus a few other books on java, C++ and perl from a local library to review and possibly buy. They were mostly o'reilly books that bored me after two weeks. I realized that o'reilly books are a bit over-worshiped. I had already decided to learn perl instead of python simply because it is used more commonly. I finally picked the quick python book just to see what all this python thingy is all about. I was not able to lay the book down for two days. I was reading after waking up, at lunch breaks, before bed and even when I could not sleep in the middle of the night. The language was as simple and intuitive to start as matlab or mathematica. The book had just the right depth, breadth and speed for my taste. Not too wordy, not too academic and all related examples to the matter at hand and no allegories. I just received my own book in mail. The book taught me things about computers and programming that I had not realized after a few years of C and C++ under my belt. I never felt too comfortable about programming and never thought I'd love coding one day but this may just have kindled that little light.

This book makes an easy-to-use language even easier. I recently needed to prepare a large number of files for database publishing. The files were a disaster -- many, many errors and structural problems. After reading a few chapters from Quick Python, I was able to immediately begin writing & testing code that helped me to straighten out the files. The annotated code samples were very clear. They really should call the book Instant Python! It is every bit as helpful as an O'Reilly book.

Later, the book turned out to be a great reference too. I especially like the sideheads in the scanning margin that provide just enough to remind me of how to use a Python technique without forcing me to read through pages of text. The chapter on COM was great and made me feel better about choosing this language over Visual Basic (my background is in VB) for this and other similar projects. The chapter on regular expressions was a little brief, but gave me enough information do some very useful file manipulation.

Two caveats: The chapter on Tk is rather thin, and this book is definitely aimed at a person with some programming experience.

I had been using 'Learning Python' by Lutz and Ascher to try to learn Python. However, I found it quite abstract, and sparse on explanation of basic syntax, with very few examples. Though probably useful for those who already know C, C++ or Java, it wasn't helping me. I have limited programming experience, primarily in SAS, a statistical analysis environment with heavily interpreted code. I found the Quick Python book to be just right for me - simple, clear language of basic syntax through to advanced topics, and enough examples to help me see what was going on. If you have limited programming experience and want to learn Python, this is a great place to start. Its probably useful to experienced programmers too, especially the quick reference in the appendix.

I have found this to be the best tutorial for the Python language of ten highly-rated books on Python that I've read. It is well-organized and presented in an interesting and very readable fashion.