Programming in Python 3: A Complete Introduction to the Python Language (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Python 3 is the best version of the language yet: It is more powerful, convenient, consistent, and expressive than ever before. Now, leading Python programmer Mark Summerfield demonstrates how to write code that takes full advantage of Python 3’s features and idioms. The first book written from a completely “Python 3” viewpoint, Programming in Python 3 brings together all the knowledge you need to write any program, use any standard or third-party Python 3 library, and create new library modules of your own.

 

Summerfield draws on his many years of Python experience to share deep insights into Python 3 development you won’t find anywhere else. He begins by illuminating Python’s “beautiful heart”: the eight key elements of Python you need to write robust, high-performance programs. Building on these core elements, he introduces new topics designed to strengthen your practical expertise–one concept and hands-on example at a time. This book’s coverage includes

 

• Developing in Python using procedural, object-oriented, and functional programming paradigms
• Creating custom packages and modules
• Writing and reading binary, text, and XML files, including optional compression, random access, and text and XML parsing
• Leveraging advanced data types, collections, control structures, and functions
• Spreading program workloads across multiple processes and threads
• Programming SQL databases and key-value DBM files
• Utilizing Python’s regular expression mini-language and module
• Building usable, efficient, GUI-based applications
• Advanced programming techniques, including generators, function and class decorators, context managers, descriptors, abstract base classes, metaclasses, and more

 

Programming in Python 3serves as both tutorial and language reference, and it is accompanied by extensive downloadable example code–all of it tested with the final version of Python 3 on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

About the Author

Mark Summerfield, owner of Qtrac Ltd., is an independent trainer, consultant, technical editor, and writer specializing in Python, C++, Qt, and PyQt. His books include Rapid GUI Programming with Python and Qt: The Definitive Guide to PyQt Programming (Addison-Wesley, 2008) and, cowritten with Jasmin Blanchette, C++ GUI Programming with Qt 4 (Addison-Wesley, 2006). As Trolltech’s documentation manager, Mark founded and edited Trolltech’s technical journal, Qt Quarterly.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 552 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1st edition (December 26, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0137129297
• ISBN-13: 978-0137129294
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.9 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #38,045 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #10 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Programming > Languages & Tools > Python
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, January 6, 2009

By	Kelly D. Painter (Lompoc, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I am new to Python and wanted to learn. Prior to purchasing this book, I was reading "Learning Python" by Mark Lutz. I was literally half way through that book and couldn't write even a simple script due to the way that book is structured. I would not recommend that book. I was frustrated and ordered this book due to its coverage of Python 3. I am pleased.

This book takes an approach that gives the reader a quick overview of the language that is complete enough to start using Python by page 40! When the book mentions a topic that is covered elsewhere, there is a little box in the margin that tells the page that topic is covered - foward and backward. Great idea! That is very handy.

I had a little task that I wanted to write a script to do and I was able to do that easily after finishing the quick intro.

I am still reading the book and there is a lot of advanced information that I have not read yet. If the beginning of the book is any indication, it will be quite useful.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Replaces many books with solid approach., January 18, 2009

By	RF RDC - See all my reviews

I thought this book was fabulous. A little experience in a previous version of Python would be helpful for contrast, but if you have any familiarity with other languages or just a keen desire to learn Python 3 then would just jump right in.

The approach of the book is a coherent and direct focus of the language and well thought out code snippets. The entire book is well contextualized - I never felt like the author just "dropped the reader into a subject."

To me the book is like taking the best parts of Python 2.x books like "Python Essential Reference", "Python Cookbook", "Python in a Nutshell", "Learning Python", "Programming Python", and elements of some rather well written python niche books like "Foundations of Python Network Programming" and porting the whole bunch to Python 3 (as well as it can actually be ported).

The author just tends to have a knack for knowing what is important to present, how and when to present it, and then to follow through to related topics and package the whole ball of wax in a gestalt of understanding.

At close to 500 pages it can be an easy weekend read that you will likely come back to time and time again.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not for me.., April 2, 2009

By	R Foose "philognosist" (Quincy, Illinois United States) - See all my reviews

A previous reviewer mentioned his experience with Mark Lutz's book. I had a similar experience with Lutz's book too. Unfortunately, after what starts out with a very useful approach (one which should be widely used by other authors) of getting you up and running quickly, Summerfield's book falls into the same problems that Lutz's book had. Namely, it s very densely written, with no obvious separation in the text from what is the useful overall knowledge about a topic and what is the more arcane. I plodded through about the first third of the book, until I realized I was becoming confused about what I already knew about Python..so I quit. To be fair, the book is not intended as a tutorial so much as it is a reference. But I have to say, that it needs a major overhaul before it can be really useful in this context too. For example, more separation using white space, or sub heads, or something, should separate sections within a chapter, and separate examples and illustrations from unrelated previous or subsequent text. A little more use of emphasis or italics to highlight key text would be nice as well. And the font used for text and code is too similar, in my opinion. Especially when the code is inline with the text. That Summerfield knows Python is quite obvious. Too bad he and his publisher are not a bit more aware of how to present that knowledge to the rest of the world.