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carlosmartinez's review against another edition
4.0
Very clear, concise and effective. I raced through it in order to get the hang of Python's syntax - not a particularly challenging task if you're already familiar with a similar object-oriented high-level programming language (Ruby, in my case). 'Think Python' did the job well, and all the better for being available as a freely-downloadable PDF. No mention of unit testing, which is slightly shocking in this day and age. Also there's some cool stuff in Python 3.6 that isn't covered here (eg f-strings for string interpolation). Overall though a really useful book.
caisah's review against another edition
4.0
This is a very well written and easy to read book. It mainly targets beginner and intermediate programmers.
The concepts are explained in an understandable manner so it's a pleasure to read every page. The book contains code examples and also exercises so it's very easy to learn and comprehend the ideas behind the words, mainly because it uses real life models.
The author is a CS professor and it does a great job with this book.
The concepts are explained in an understandable manner so it's a pleasure to read every page. The book contains code examples and also exercises so it's very easy to learn and comprehend the ideas behind the words, mainly because it uses real life models.
The author is a CS professor and it does a great job with this book.
meags1's review against another edition
I did a quick re-read of this for the third or fourth time to see if the latest edition would shed more light on 2 vs 3 and the great schism.
Nope.
It is weird coming back to my first programming language. It is like returning to a friend you didn't really understand, and now that you get things more, all their flaws are really obvious and oh god, its not php, but things are still not pretty.
It is still the one at the party thats useful for GIS and data science, so fuck it, I guess its useful.
Nope.
It is weird coming back to my first programming language. It is like returning to a friend you didn't really understand, and now that you get things more, all their flaws are really obvious and oh god, its not php, but things are still not pretty.
It is still the one at the party thats useful for GIS and data science, so fuck it, I guess its useful.
ericlawton's review against another edition
5.0
I would have given 4* but it is available in PDF FOR FREE, authorized by author/publisher ,so definitely a 5*.
I'm an experienced programmer in a dozen or so languages so I read it quickly - it told me just what I wanted to know about differences between Python AS A LANGUAGE and Java, C++ .
Actually, the most important reason for learning any new language these days is the packages available and this intro didn't go into that at all. Python is a full general purpose language but the main reason for choosing over similar languages is for scientific packages. A survey chapter on these would have made it 5* even at full price.
I would also recommend the book for programming novices because it tells you some really useful things about introductory computer science as well; data structures and algorithms as well as object-oriented programming. Just a hint, not enough to really learn them, but so you will know they are out there and just as important as the language syntax and will dig deeper when ready.
I'm an experienced programmer in a dozen or so languages so I read it quickly - it told me just what I wanted to know about differences between Python AS A LANGUAGE and Java, C++ .
Actually, the most important reason for learning any new language these days is the packages available and this intro didn't go into that at all. Python is a full general purpose language but the main reason for choosing over similar languages is for scientific packages. A survey chapter on these would have made it 5* even at full price.
I would also recommend the book for programming novices because it tells you some really useful things about introductory computer science as well; data structures and algorithms as well as object-oriented programming. Just a hint, not enough to really learn them, but so you will know they are out there and just as important as the language syntax and will dig deeper when ready.
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