Subscriber Reviews

Average Rating:  Based on 40 Ratings

"Learning Python, 4th Edition" - by brian.k.martin on 14-JAN-2013
Reviewer Rating:
After reading some of the reviews I decided to use this book as my first choice for a foray into Python. I ignored the one "bad" review that mentioned how infuriating the book was. I should have listened!

I am a longtime reader and user of O'Reilly books. Usually they are tops in terms of quality of writing, completeness, and ease of use. This book is some type of aberration, though. It's actually very tough to use for a newbie. Literally, you don't get into anything that even approaches programming until CHAPTER 10. That's page #263 out of 1162 pages! This is ridiculous... absolutely maddeningly ridiculous.

Typically when O'Reilly puts out a book like this there's a brief "Learning" guide, a more in-depth, very thick "Programming" guide, and a "Quick Reference". The Learning PERL guide is super easy to read and tremendously useful. The Programming PERL text is appropriately deep and detailed. Likewise, the Quick Reference is brief and to the point. However, the Learning PYTHON guide is a mess. If I'm trying to learn how to use a new programming language (one that is supposedly the end-all-beat-all) then I don't want to read through 50 pages of different ways to LAUNCH a program... followed by 120 more pages of the 10,000 different ways I can make a string or a number. I mean, WHO IN THE HECK WROTE THIS?

I realize Mark Lutz is supposed to be the grand wizard of Python but if this is the best he's got, he needs to stick to programming and leave the writing and teaching to someone with the chops to do it.

Sorry... but I absolutely cannot recommend this book. It's terribly paced, overly detailed, painfully frustrating to read. What's worse... it failed at it's primary goal of teaching me Python. It fails not by lack of information... but because by the time it finally gets around to showing you how to DO anything productive, you no longer CARE to continue reading. It squanders the reader's excitement for learning a new language and burns that goodwill going through mind-numbing minutiae instead to the point that you'd just rather toss the book and try something else. I'm going to try Head First Python and  the Core Python Programming book recommended by another user instead. Maybe they'll dispense with the scholarly dissection of relatively trivial nonsense and get down to showing me how to use the language.
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"Excellent" - by Anonymous on 25-NOV-2012
Reviewer Rating:
concise and well written
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"There are better out there" - by Anonymous on 10-JUN-2012
Reviewer Rating:
Do yourself a favor. Read Core Python Programming, by Wesley Chun instead. It covers more material in a well explained, yet more concise manner.

"Learning Python" really drags. As an experienced software engineer I know I'm not the intended audience for this, but I am new to to python and wanted some basic programming excersizes to learn from as well some some easy to find/concise syntax info. Practice excersizes seem ok (so this is on my 10-shelf this month). Layout not very good as a reference or to skim over. If you have to pick just one definately pick the W.Chun book.

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"Get this book" - by curtvprice on 17-AUG-2012
Reviewer Rating:
This book is awesome, especially for someone like me who is not a full time developer and needs to dive in to programming occasionally and have a reference. (The pocket references are okay, but often not enough to get me back up to speed.)
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"Infuriating book" - by lisa.a.farley on 23-FEB-2012
Reviewer Rating:
Every time I pick this book up, I want to throw it against the wall within moments.  The author goes into excruciating detail about what I would consider some of the more esoteric details of Python before he even introduces basic concepts like functions and classes.

I use this book as a reference because I happen to own it, but I wouldn't recommend it to someone who is trying to learn Python.
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