Programming Python book
I’m very excited as my book, Programming Python 3rd Edition, was delivered yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately my evening was dedicated to that night’s SA Developer .NET meeting and then to my next Silverlight talk preparations so I haven’t had time to sit in a comfy chair yet and start reading to start reading it in depth. The book has been nicknamed “The Budgie Killer” at work because of its immense size and in reference to a Monty Python skit (remembering that the Python language is named after the television series), as it’s a hefty tomb and glancing through the pages looks like it means business.
I’ve been writing Python scripts on and off for the last 3 months or so and I’ve been constantly surprised at how easy and yet powerful the language is. I’m also very lucky to write scripts for the Windows and IBM AIX unix platforms as there’s something special about writing a script once and seeing it run on multiple platforms and in different environments.
I’ve bought this book (and I haven’t bought a book this big since my VB6 days) because I want to add Python as a language to my CV because I believe dynamic languages are going to hit the scene again in the next couple of years. You just have to look at the On Rails movement as well as Microsoft’s Dynamic Language Runtime that they are building; and I’d add that XML as a first-class citizen of VB.NET are all portents of things to come.
Sadly, having started to read the Preface, it looks like I’ll be forking out for Learning Python because my book focuses on teaching application-level programming and is a followup to learning the core language done in Learning Python. Programming Python does however skim through the basics of the language before teaching the System, GUI and Internet libraries which “do stuff” and what a developers wants to really do, and Learning Python (looking at the table contents) focuses on the core language concepts like creating and manipulating objects and handling exceptions; so I think both are a worthwhile investment to make.
