Beginner books about Python 3

April 3, 2009 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: book review, Non-fiction, Python 

Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner, Second Edition (Paperback), by Mark Sommerfield

Python 3 is used more programming-pythonand more. It is a very powerful and versatile language. Python 3 is perhaps the best version of the language yet. This version 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 has many years of Python experience.  He has deep insights into Python 3 development that you won’t find anywhere else. He begins by 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

It is a great beginning book, loved and recommended by readers. As one reader writes: “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.” This is certainly a book I recommend!

Another very good book for people starting with Python is

Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner, Second Edition (Paperback), by Michael Dawson

This is a more basic book, not intended for programmers. So If you are a programmer looking to learn the Python language, this book is not for you. It’s for people who want to learn to program, and for whom Python may well be the weapon of choice. python-programming
The sample programs are realistic. They’re also short enough that someone can type them in as they go along. The author takes the reader all the way from “no experience required” all the way through OOP. Each step is gentle and encouraging. Along the way, the author points out what is a requirement and what is just convention. Computer jargon is explained in comfortable terms for the beginner.

Some of the main points the book touches on, i’m not going by any particular order…
-If, elif, else structures
-While loops
-For loops
-Functions
-Classes
-GUI’s and everything that entitles

The book comes with a cd which has all the source code you need to start programming. I highly recommend it for beginner programmers, as it is very good and very basic! Good luck!

Links to Python at amazon US and Python at amazon UK.

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