Decent book

I like the book, enjoying it a lot, right about chapter 9 or so; although it is dense and it needs time to digest.

Pros:

- Very in-depth for 2.x and 3.x, really like how the author tackles subjects.

- Clear examples and goes in depth in all of them.

- So full of information that I feel I learn more than expected.

- Excellent as a reference as well.

- Excellent to learn how things really work in python, not a tutorial, not a simple guy, an in-depth killer book.

- Good set of quiz questions and also exercises.

- Good value for money.

Cons:

- Can be slightly dense.

- Some things are not extremely necessary and going too in-depth can cause the reader to think "when are we writing some code? c'mon".

Buy it, have it on your desk.

After reading 1000 pages of the book I think book is very good. As a data analyst with just a little knowledge of Java and basic OOP concepts I found this book have everything beginner need to start programming in Python. When I started to learn Python I used some web tutorials, but this book gives me better understanding of things and I have really learned a lot from it.

Lot of people see the size of the book as the downside, and I have to say it is depressing, but on the other hand I think see that as a benefit because book cover everything beginner need to learn to start to do some real quality programming, and I don't have to search for another sources. Anyway I don't think programming can be learned in one week after reading a 300 pages book, and shorter books don't cover this many topics.

There is a lot of repetiton in the book which for me personally is not bad because I see them as a reminders and if the topic is something I feel I really understand I simply skip it.

The only thing I don't like is that book's code which can be downloaded from publishers website is a complete unorganised mess, and poorly referenced in the book. So most of the time when I want I can't find the example code there, which make it completely useless.

So, if you have time and want to learn Python I recommend this book, but if you have a short deadline or you don't have a lot of patients you should definitely skip it.

What an excellent and fully document book for starting Python. I do have Python in a Nutshell, but decided I needed to start a little earlier in the sequence. This is a huge book (some 1600 pages) and it is clearly written with lots of tips and repeated warnings of beginners mistakes.

It is based on lectures given by the author and feedback from the students. I am proceeding by leaps and bounds and find the code examples excellent. One can, of course, skip any which one does not need to do.

I read it on the train to work (despite its size) and find it possible to practise the exercises when I get home. Python is simpler to learn than C or C++ and the structure of the objects is natural. If only I'd structured my exam question as clearly!

First of all this book is massive - it's the thickest paperback book I've ever seen! Despite its huge physical size the high quality print and binding work very well to keep the book usable.

As a computing/radio hobbyist I've found this book to be an excellent Python tutorial. Having read it in its entirety I now find the book to be a very useful reference to get me back up to speed when I start a programming project. If you want to move on to more advanced Python Mark's Programming Python makes a great companion to this book.

This is the very basic (and heavy) book for everyone interested in Python. The text is very thorough but still easy to read. There are also many questions and exercises to keep up the learning in case one wants to also code instead of only read it through.

This book is huge and goes into vast detail. There is considerable repetition, and it is jargon heavy. If you are an experienced programmer who came up via the computer science route, it will all make sense and you will be able to relate it to things you already know about. If not, you could find yourself drowning in a sea of words.

I'm leaving this review because I think the title is a bit misleading. The blurb describes it as an "easy to follow self-paced tutorial". I would not use this book as a general textbook to learn Python in this way. It is quite abstract. For instance, when the author starts on OOP, he seems to focus on how Python implements OO internally. The way that the interpreter searches for class members up a tree is part of the technical detail of the language itself, but it isn't much use to a programmer who just wants to convert some OO code from another language into Python, or someone who doesn't yet understand OO. At one point the author seems to be reassuring his audience that this OO stuff isn't really a new paradigm, it's just a slightly different way of doing the same thing that is already done by modules and packages.

I think the main use for this book is for someone who finds himself in a new job where there is a lot of pre-existing Python code to be maintained and added to, and where over the years a number of different approaches have been used so that he is constantly coming across new usage patterns, or the same thing done in different ways. For this, it is very good because of its exhaustive attention to detail. For someone who just wants to learn the basics of a programming language, this book could be extremely off-putting. For instance, although the author claims that the Python syntax makes it easier to understand than Java, there are plenty of excellent Java textbooks which explain OO and its Java implementation very clearly. Putting them side by side might well convince the beginner that Java is much easier to learn.

It certainly has a place and it is valuable that so much information is available in one place.

Great book that works as a reference to the language. I find the book perfect when I need to dive deeper under the hood of Python. I do all my personal projects in Pyton3 but still use Python 2.6 at work (CentOS 6.4). The book does a good job comparing both Python versions. In my opinion invaluable at your desk and pdf version in your laptop.

Über 1.500 Seiten - das ist ein Biest von Buch. Da kann man schon mal ein paar Wochen und Monate Zeit mit verbringen. Dabei baut dieses Werk das Wissen logisch und - meiner Meinung nach auch didaktisch sehr gut gemacht - auf. Sprache und Ausdrucksweise sind sehr gut verständlich, die diversen Wiederholungen mögen dem einen oder anderen Leser überflüssig scheinen, ich empfinde das aber eher positiv, weil beim Lesen und durcharbeiten eines Buchs diesen Umfangs am Ende doch mehr Wissen dauerhaft hängen bleibt. Wer Python ernsthafter und intensiver nutzen möchte, ist gut beraten, sich dieses Buch anzuschaffen, denn es hat Referenzcharakter. Man findet sehr viele Themen und der Index ist gut gepflegt.

Ich habe schon diverse Projekte in Java, C++ und C# realisiert, auch recht umfangreiche mit und ohne GUI, multithreaded, parallel und auch nicht parallel. Und dennoch muss ich sagen, dass - mal angesehen von den grundlegenden Sprachkonstrukten (Bedingungen, Operatoren, Schleifen, Listen, Arrays, Dictionaries etc ppa.), die in allen Programmiersprachen hinreichend ähnlich bis nahezu identisch aufgebaut und nutzbar sind - dieses Buch sehr deutlich zeigt, dass Python bei weitem alles andere als nur eine einfache "Script"-Sprache ist. Man kann definitiv schnell und easy Scripts mit Python schreiben und das auf vielen Betriebssystemen. Das ist genial. Alle erforderlichen Grundlagen dafür werden vom Author solide vermittelt und alle Konzepte sind hinreichend mit Beispiel-Code belegt. Easy to follow!

Aber mit Python lassen sich auch mächtige und trotzdem effiziente Programme schreiben. Ich betreibe z.B. einen Cluster mit 15 Raspi 3B+ Platinen (60 Threads), um neuronale Netze, parallele Algorithmen für Machine Learning und Programme (in MPI programmiert) zu erforschen, eigene Programme zu schreiben etc. ppa. Neben C++ ist hier Python eine hervorragend geeignete Sprache nicht nur für die Steuerung und das Monitoring meines Raspi-Clusters, sondern eben auch für die darauf laufenden verteilten Anwendungen inkl. GUIs z.B. mit Tkinter oder Anbindung an MySQL oder SQL-Server für Datenbanken. Bei all diesen Python-Projekten hat mir das Buch von Mark Lutz erheblich weitergeholfen. Dazu habe ich auch sein zweites "Big Beast" mit dem Titel "Programming Python", das ebenfalls gute 1.500 Seiten hat, gelesen, wo es um die praktischen Anwendungen, also der echten Programmierung von GUIs und zahlreichen realen Anwendungen aus verschiedenen Bereichen geht. Auch dieses zweite Buch ist ein Referenzwerk für mich.

Insgesamt kann ich "Learning Python" von Mark Lutz jedem empfehlen, der ein tieferes Verständnis von Python entwickeln möchte und der eben nicht nur ein paar kleine Scripts basteln möchte. Dafür gibt es sehr viel kürzere und kompaktere Darstellungen. Aber wer Python - wie ich - auch für größere und ernsthafte Projekte einsetzen möchte, sollte dieses Buch lesen und es in Greifnähe behalten. Ich beschäftige mich seit gut 1,5 Jahren intensiv mit Python und schlage noch immer das eine oder andere Thema in diesem Buch nach.

Als absolut hilfreiche und lesenswerte Ergänzung zu den beiden Büchern von Mark Lutz möchte ich hier auch das Buch "The Python 3 Standard Library by Example" von Doug Hellmann empfehlen. Es gibt für mich kein besseres Buch, dass die unglaublich umfangreichen Standardbibliotheken von Python so gut erklärt. Für Fortgeschrittene, die mal Profi werden wollen, eine wahre Goldgrube.

This is not a reference book, it is a tutorial so you will be probably better off by reading it from the beginning to the end. It explains everything in detail. The first chapters give a nice overview of the language and then it goes more in depth. I was really into this approach because it gives context before diving into the details. This will lead to some repetition of important concepts sometimes which I personally find extremely useful. It explains differences with python 2.x also. Not an easy read but be patient and take your time to digest the material.

You will find solutions to the exercise at the end.

Pages > 1500.

The content of the book is very detailed and I personally found it useful during the learning process. The book came in not so good physical shape. The reason is partly paper quality, mostly though, it concerns packaging which allows the book to move freely inside the box.

Unnecessarily long, extremely dispersive and cluttered. Sometimes redundant and ripetitive, sometimes surprisingly dismissive.

Check David Beazley books instead.

This book is a monstrosity. It exceeds 1600 pages and is cumbersome to read.

That being said, it is very well written. Each section introduces new concepts and then tests them with exercises. The author's writing style is very easy to understand and it's almost like listening to a professor in a class environment.

If you don't know Python and want to learn it properly, I really recommend this book. By the end of it you will feel like you have a good grasp of the language and its intricacies. If you take it slow and read it in its entirety (it is not the type of book you can skim), then it really is like taking a full semester course, except much, much cheaper!!