[TriLUG] Books for learning Python

[Chris Calloway]

On 4/7/2009 1:56 PM, Aaron Joyner wrote:
> I've heard great things about Dive Into Python, but I personally got up to
> speed w/ Python in a Nutshell.  This surprised me, as I generally dislike
> the Nutshell series, but this particular book (written by a co-worker, Alex
> Martelli), was actually fantastic for transitioning from years of Perl and
> ANSI C experience to Python in short order.

I second Python in a Nutshell for experienced programmers. You are 
eventually going to have to read it anyway if you read some other Python 
book. So may as well start there.

The only comprehensive alternative is David Beazley's Python Essential 
Reference. Both that and Python in a Nutshell could be considered Python 
reference manuals, which is what you need if you are an experienced 
programmer.

Dive Into Python, while really great in its day, is so woefully out of 
date that you will stall right in the middle of the book. In the middle 
of the book all the examples are based on two public web services which 
aren't available anymore. The book is arranged so that each chapter 
builds on the code examples of the previous chapters. So the whole book 
just stops working halfway through. A shame because the book was the 
best at showing programming the Pythonic way.

Here are the recommendations from TriZPUG, which are not geared towards 
the experienced programmer, but towards the Python philosophy of 
"programming for everybody" instead:

http://trizpug.org/up-to-speed/

-- 
Sincerely,

Chris Calloway
http://www.secoora.org
office: 332 Chapman Hall   phone: (919) 599-3530
mail: Campus Box #3300, UNC-CH, Chapel Hill, NC 27599