[Tutor] Speaking of Books..

[Scot Stevenson]

Hello there, 

> Now that there are lots of beginners books out the 2nd
> edition has a much more focused approach and altho' still
> not a reference book it is pretty comprehensive in its
> coverage of more advanced topics.

I found Lutz's book (2nd edition) very useful after going thru "Learning 
Python" and would feel good about recommending it. My main gripe is that 
bits of code created early in the book are used all over the place later, 
which makes it harder to look up one topic later on. The reusable 
"Quitter" code on page 305 was the most annoying bit of code that kept 
getting imported again and again and again.  

I have been thru three Python books so far ("Learning Python", 
"Programming Python", and currently "Python and Tkinter programming") and 
have found that all three have two problems:

1) The rate of change to the Python language obviously outstrips the 
ability of people to write hardcopy documentation. In "Programming 
Python", for example, "assert" is covered briefly on page 1211 with no 
text on what you would want to use it for ("Assertions are mostly meant 
for debugging" is not that helpful if you are just learning how to 
program). This mutation rate is enormously frustrating if you are trying 
to learn the language; I hope that at least the core part of Python will 
stabilize soon. 

Then again, Mark Lutz probably does, too =8). 

2) A lot of time is spent explaining workarounds for Windows problems 
(like the lack of a "fork" call) that I as a Linux user couldn't care less 
about. I realize that until Linux has achieved World Domination, there 
will be people around who have these problems and who are probably upset 
about all the Unix stuff. But it does mean that when I buy one of these 
books, I'm paying for lots of information I can't use. 

Y, Scot