A Mountain of Perl Books + Python Advocacy

[Andrew M. Kuchling]

rzantow at my-deja.com writes:
> the whole language, and buying more books. I'm really surprised there
> are as many as 13 Python books on the market. I'd have thought there
> was a need for maybe three, along with about two pamphlets and a poster.

I'm not surprised, and think there's room for still more.  Hopefully
the next wave of books will aim at specific topics: Python and
{Tkinter,KDE,GTk+,wxWindows}, Python for numeric work, for Web stuff,
for bioinformatics, for teaching programming, inside Zope, JPython for
Java programmers who need to embed a scripting language, etc.

Introductory books are a filled niche, IMHO, and they all sort of look
the same, with the same topics and organization: here are the basic
types, here are lists and dictionaries, here are modules, here are
classes, etc... Probably this all stems from the Tutorial's ordering
of topics.  Doubtless there's some iconoclast who'd start with classes
and work downward (or a Knuth who'd start with bytecode and then work
up).  Those variations would be interesting to see, but ringing more
tiny changes on the same introductory structure seems like a poor way
to spend time.

-- 
A.M. Kuchling			http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/
Nobody can find fault with legitimate ambition, but when the wealth of the
spiritual and intellectual life is reduced to a formula for overcoming sales
resistance, we protest.
  -- Robertson Davies, _A Voice from the Attic_