I am a little surprised at the lack of reviews of this book here in UK. It's a great book to get started with Python. When it introduces new things, it doesn't let the student just go in the wild world of Google to search them. For e.g. when writing a web app, it actually walks you through the basics of flask - other video tutorials just say install flask and run these commands. And you are expected to follow without understanding what it all means. I am not expecting a detailed web development lesson in a python book, but good to understand the basics.

I will say this - do not attempt to read the kindle version - not available in UK anyways. The book uses various visual tools to enhance stickiness of what it teaches. There are "snippets" - hand-written-note-style text and all, which is impossible to read on a kindle. Perhaps you can if you are using an iPad to read kindle book. But still not as functional as the actual book, which makes me feel like I am back in college. It's a good feeling to have in mid-30s.

Content wise, absolutely top notch for a beginner.

This book helped fill in my Python abilities and understanding's. each chapter builds on the previous, so you can see how different Python tools work when combined together.

Brilliant introduction to the python programming language, highly recommend it to anyone, easy and well explained examples that get you coding straight away.

I like the style of these books, infrographic style to make boring side of coding more interesting

A great primer and introduction to programming and specifically Python. The simple and clever orientation of this book makes it a great for beginners.

Bought as gift

So how can the book refer to colours coded code and all the code and pictures be black and white. And i know for a fact that there is meant to be colour because i have just got the pdf version and all pictures and code has colour. Not good at all.

Bit too basic and doesn't really cover a great deal of the python language itself. Good for novices looking to get a web page up and running quickly though and is simple enough not to confuse beginning programmers.

I strongly recommend this for beginner and intermediate developers . Even advance python developer can use this .

Paul has very well explained every concept . I am just reading the chapter on Decorators and came here just to give comment ! This book == learn by doing . He used Flask web framework to explain the concept of Python which is very engaging !!!!

A great book to start your Python journey. Guides reader through a well-rounded experience involving webapps and databases. It pushes one gently out of comfort zone, into the learning zone.

I also like the sharing of insights on various aspects of Python and OOP.

The informal writing style and adequate repetitions were great for reinforcing the lessons. The mini 'tests' were helpful in internalizing knowledge and working the brain.

The book is by no means exhaustive, but I found it a great learning aid.

Bon ouvrage

Es un libro que tiene una organización didáctica notable. Sigue los principios psicopedagógicos disponibles derivados de las investigaciones mas recientes en torno a el aprendizaje y la enseñanza contingente. En el prólogo destaca los fundamentos sobre los que se ha elaborado el contenido orientado a la adquisición del conocimiento mediante la práctica y el ejercicio de las habilidades basadas en la ejercitación de actividades que consoliden el aprendizaje tendiente a una aplicación profesional del conocimiento.

Un lenguaje de complejidad creciente expresa los temas guiando al lector-aprendiz en la adquisición del conocimiento que al cabo de cada capítulo se admira de haber logrado superar la complejidad inherente a la programación. Cumple eficazmente con las promesas ofrecidas. Es un libro que se podría emplear en una clase de pedagogía para evidenciar cómo lograr la aplicación de los principios descubiertos en las investigaciones psicopedagógicas sobre el aprendizaje de temas complejos.

+ : la présentation "head first" rend réellement plus abordable l'acquisition des concepts, même une peu compliqués (ex : "comprehension", "decorators" , "context management class").

+ : au final, l'essentiel du python est bien transmis.

- : une grande partie des exemples est consacrée à une application de type web, ce qui n'est pas vraiment ce qui m'intéressait au premier abord. Mais les exemples sont souvent là, plus pour servir la pédagogie que pour servir de base à des développements.