[Tutor] Python book suggestion please

[Daniel Yoo]

On Fri, 4 May 2001, Learn Python wrote:

> i'm new to python and i do java @ work.

Nice to meet you!


> I'm looking to buy a good / probably the best reference
> book available right now in the market. I checked out
> a few titles and arrived at the follwing titles:
> 
> 1. Programming Python 2nd edition (orielly)
> 2. Python programmer's refernce (Insider Press)..by Beazely ( this is not 
> uptodate i guess since it does'nt cover 2.0)

The following is just my opinions, so please take it with a grain of salt:

    1.  Programming Python is big and heavy.  Usually, this is a good
thing because it allows the author to be comprehensive.  It's also an
advantage if you want to improve your hand grip.  The book seems a bit too
spread out, so it might not be useful as a reference.  It's good reading,
but if you're in a hurry, this might not be your first choice.

    2.  "Learning Python" by Mark Lutz is a good book if you're already
familiar with a computer language.  It's not too heavy, unlike Programming
Python, and it hits the core features of Python very quickly.  I highly
recommend it.

    3.  David Beazley's "Python Essential Reference" is amazingly well
organized.  I find myself looking at it if I can't get at online
documentation. However, it is also targeted on Python 1.52, so I hope that
Beazley updates it soon.  It's a very good reference, and easy to find
things, very informative, and condensed.

    4.  Wesley Chun has just written "Core Python Programming", and since
he's one of the tutor@python.org list operators, it would be simply
criminal not to mention his book.  (Ahem.)  I've heard good things about
it, but haven't had the chance to buy it yet.


However, you might not even need to buy a book: check out the Python
tutorial:

    http://python.org/doc/current/tut/tut.html

Its intended audience are those who already know how to program in a
language like C, C++, Perl, or Java, so it should be very useful for you.
You may be able to learn (or at least, see) the core of Python in an hour
by going through the tutorial.

Also, the library reference is downloadable from here:

    http://python.org/doc/current/download.html

so you can always keep a local copy on your computer.


If you have any questions, feel free to ask us on tutor.  Good luck to
you.