(This) new edition definitely gets a 10/10. It has everything you need to get a great start with Python.
— Joe Topjian, Adminspotting
Beginning Python: From Novice to Professional is the most comprehensive book on the Python ever written. Based on Practical Python, this newly revised book is both an introduction and practical reference for a swath of Python-related programming topics, including addressing language internals, database integration, network programming, and web services. Advanced topics, such as extending Python and packaging/distributing Python applications, are also covered.
Ten different projects illustrate the concepts introduced in the book. You will learn how to create a P2P file-sharing application and a web-based bulletin board, and how to remotely edit web-based documents and create games. Author Magnus Lie Hetland is an authority on Python and previously authored Practical Python. He also authored the popular online guide, Instant Python Hacking, on which both books are based.
About The Author
Magnus Lie Hetland is an associate professor of algorithms at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU. Even though he loves learning new programming languages&emdash;even quite unusual ones&emdash;Magnus has been a devoted Python fan and an active member of the Python community for many years, and is the author of the popular online tutorials "Instant Python" and "Instant Hacking." His has written publications including Practical Python and Beginning Python, as well as several scientific papers. When he isn't busy staring at a computer screen, he may be found reading (even while bicycling), acting (in a local theater group), or gaming (mostly role-playing games).
Reader Reviews
I'm a little surprised to see such great reviews for this book, especially those reviews that claim this is the book you should start out with for Python. Granted, it all depends on what your background is, but I feel like if you know nothing about Python (even if you know another language), then this isn't the best book to start with. Thus far I've read two Python books: first, Learning Python; and second, Beginning Python (this book). Learning Python should, without a doubt, be the book to start with. It teaches Python from the ground up so that not only will you know how to write a function or a class, but you know what exactly is going on behind the scenes when all this is happening (but not in so much detail as to be over the heads of newcomers). Beginning Python, on the other hand, contains very cursory introductions to each element of Python. The core language is presented in the first 200 pages, each chapter being around twenty or so pages. After the first twenty pages, you are already introduced to functions and modules! Eventually these topics are covered again, but this book just moves too fast for a beginner. I suppose someone who is already a programmer will be able to pick up quickly on this fast-paced introduction, but even that person will be at a loss for how Python is working under the hood. Beginning Python doesn't even spend much time explaining how all Python 'variables' are only references to an object, and never contain the object itself. This is a fairly simple idea to grasp, but the consequences are so important that it really needs a somewhat lengthy section of its own (that's just an example of how the book moves too fast). But still, it's not a *bad* book. It was great for me because it served as a quick review of what I had already learned (more thoroughly) in Learning Python. Furthermore, later chapters discuss some of the more popular and effective third-party modules (i.e. py2exe, Beautiful Soup, wxPython) but again, not in very much detail. Each of these chapters is about ten pages. Finally, there are the ten projects at the end of the book. I've only read the first one of these so far. They seem fairly involved, and probably require a little more experimentation with the language before tackling. Overall, my opinion is this: Learning Python should be the first book anyone reads on the subject, especially newcomers to the language and hobbyist programmers, but even experienced programmers need that book. Beginning Python is a great review of the material because it moves through it quickly, but it is *not* a good introduction for exactly that same reason. The strongpoints of this book are that it exposes you to a wide variety of standard and third-party modules, so that after you have read the later chapters, you will at least know where to go for further information for just about any project you can think of.
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