Building Skills in Python: A Programmer’s Introduction to Python

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This book is a complete presentation of the Python language. We'll lead you from a very tiny, easy to understand subset of statements to the entire Python language and all of the built-in data structures. Professional programmers who need to learn Python are our primary audience.
We provide specific help for you in a number of ways.

• Since Python is simple, we can address newbie programmers who don’t have deep experience in a
number of other languages. We will call out some details in specific newbie sections. Experienced
programmers can skip these sections.
• Since Python has a large number of sophisticated built-in data structures, we address these separately and fully. An understanding of these structures can simplify complex programs.
• The object-orientation of Python provides tremendous flexibility and power. This is a deep subject,
and we will provide an introduction to object-oriented programming in this book. More advanced
design techniques are addressed in Building Skills in Object-Oriented Design.
• The accompanying libraries make it inexpensive to develop complex and complete solutions with minimal effort. This, however, requires some time to understand the packaged components that are available, and how they can be integrated to create useful software. We cover some of the most important modules to specifically prevent programmers from reinventing the wheel with each project.

Instructors are a secondary audience. If you are looking for classroom projects that are engaging, comprehensible, and focus on perfecting language skills, this book can help. Each chapter in this book contains exercises that help students master the concepts presented in the chapter.

Great textbook for those wanting to learn Python

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Okay first of all, if you are me and have ZERO knowledge of programming before reading this book: continue with this review. If, however, you know a decent amount about programming: this review is not going to help you (in my opinion).
PROS: This book is SO DETAILED, that I was able to teach myself programming on python. I DO NOT learn from books...EVER. But, I took this class online and there were no notes. This book is incredible, and if I managed to get a perfect score on every program I did from just reading this book...THEN YOU CAN TOO. P.S. I go to U of M (go blue) so do not think that this was an easy feat...IT WAS THE BOOK!

CONS: Honestly, not many. The only one that sticks out, is if you know a lot about programming already, this book will do squat for you. It does not show incredibly advanced programs, just the main parts about python.

My recommendation is that the book is fairly cheap and very good so buy it.

ONE LAST THING AND THE MOST IMPORTANT THING!!!!
Buy it USED!
I got suckered into buying a more expensive one because it came with that "KEY" that comes with the book. The "KEY" is just the download for python: which is a FREE SOFTWARE! I didn't even use the key. Still unsure...look it up, just to be safe in case I'm an idiot (but seriously, look it up so you don't feel like you took advice that may backfire on you, always good to be on the safe side). Good luck in your choice :)
By Shawil

Outstanding Introduction To Programming Using Python 3

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Head First Programming: A learner's guide to programming using the Python language
This tutorial in programming for the adult (high-school and beyond) beginner is outstanding, probably the best volume of its kind. But, determining whether this book is for you and getting the most out of it requires understanding what it successfully sets out to accomplish. It is a careful guide-yourself tutorial in programming concepts and practice for the mature (but-not-humorless) reader providing scientifically-designed pedagogy to instruct and give practice in modern programming concepts using the Python 3 language. The purpose of this book is to enable an adolescent or adult who has never programmed previously, to accomplish significant coding projects and to provide instruction in modern programming methods. It is not (nor does it claim to be) the most efficient method of learning Python and its idioms for someone who has previous programming practice. In fact it eschews Python style in favor of whatever control structures and statements will be clearest to the novice and that will provide a template which can be followed in other modern languages. Like all of the excellent and carefully taught Head-First series it offers designed multi-sensory instruction in the topic under consideration applying recent discoveries in cognitive science and instructional design to ensure that the reader "gets it" and can carry out the methods s/he has learned in practice. I would highly recommend this book to instruct a beginner in programming on modern methods and practices. It does not pretend to be a general introduction to the Python language, its idioms, libraries and practices. In choosing Python 3 for its well-thought examples it uses the best of this batteries-included language but many of the tools, libraries and graphics and scientific packages that so far are only available for Python 2 cannot be demonstrated to the reader.

To summarize this is an outstanding and comprehensive introduction to programming for the mature reader, but in designing this text for that specific goal it does not pretend to be a general tutorial in Python or other particular methods.
ByIra Laefsky

The quick Python book - a book that's usable and useful from start to finish

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I found The Quick Python Book, Second Edition to be the best single Python book I've so far discovered. I believe the reason for that is that the book is not only well structured and written, but also well edited.

That might sound obvious -- shouldn't every book be well structured, written, and edited? -- but it is, alas, too rare in the world of technical publishing.

The analogy I'll use is that of a regular bicyclist who invites a new rider out for a spin. At some point the experienced rider becomes bored with waiting for the slower rider and speeds off into the distance. So it is with many technical books. They start out slowly but begin speeding up and losing coherence somewhere around the 30-percent to 50-percent mark. The result is that many readers end up being left behind by the author -- and more importantly the editor -- at the very moment when the reader most needs the steady pacing and clear language of the earlier chapters.

In contrast, The Quick Python book maintains its level of detail, its pacing, and its clarity from end-to-end. It never detours into superfluous esoterica and pointless corner cases. It instead provides useable and useful descriptions and examples that effectively communicate a given chapter's central points, no more, no less. (Ironically, the writing and examples were so helpful that The Quick Python Book wasn't "quick" -- pretty much every chapter was informative enough that I enjoyed pausing to experiment and using my newly acquired knowledge to learn more on my own more before moving on...)

In fairness, I'd gone through some number of Python 3 books before arriving at The Quick Python Book. So I began reading The Quick Python Book with a jumble of half-digested Python concepts rattling around in my head. The Quick Python Book immediately began helping me assemble my mental grab bag of Python concepts into a far more coherent whole. And to acquire some useful new knowledge, too.

In the end I don't believe any single Python book can by itself magically transform a learner into a "real" Python 3 programmer. That said, The Quick Python Book is so far the only Python 3 book I've actually purchased. The book's structure, its writing, its examples, and its editing combine to make it not only a great learning resource, but also a book I'll return to when I need to refresh my understanding of one or another key Python concept...
ByRBV

Beginning Python: From Novice to Professional

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Mangnus Hetland's book was my intro to the python world. He strikes a balance between being tutorial for a programmer with shaky feet to being empowering by giving insights into software development ideas for bigger projects. Speaking of those, not only does he enrich the book with a tour of the object oriented and pattern filled language. To show these pieces in practice, he offers multiple practical project pieces (parsing markups like html/xml, building GUIs, erecting a web service) that make a rookie feel good to see working. And he does so with iterative programming, showing a simple implementation and then a more filled in one, as is natural for a programmer to go through without feeling overwhelmed. Throughout the book he throws all sorts of wisdom from the various hats that he wears, (teacher, developer and Pythonista...). I credit a lot to him the scripts I have running on production servers.
ByY. Maman

Programming Python - Powerful Object Oriented Programming

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Most of us try to learn by reading a book from beginning to end. But using that approach with this book will put you in information overload. I suggest you start at the beginning, and when your sponge starts getting full, skip to a chapter that really interests you, such as the photo viewer, slide show, digital clock, text editor, etc.
Along the way, you will need to refer back to the sections you skipped. (Earlier you learned the author's style and way of presenting concepts.) But now, you are on a mission to research specific information you bypassed. Suddenly, the details you were trudging through become meaningful and interesting because you are digging through them with a purpose - to help you understand one of the advanced topics. This approach will help you overcome the information overload you will get from trying to sequentially plod through the tremendous amount of detail in the early chapters...

After building a couple of the examples, most of us will "cookbook" the exercises to change and create something similar, but altered for our purposes. And what do you do when your modified code doesn't work, and you can't figure out why? That's when the real power of this book becomes evident. You can refer back to the details behind the area causing a problem. The huge amount of "what ifs, insights and details will provide the help you need to figure out how to fix your code. That doesn't happen with books a fourth the size of this one.
The information is very detailed, and accurate. The author knows what he is talking about. And yes, he could have used arbitrary variable names such as a, b, c, Daffy, Donald, Mickey, Goofy and x, y, z, but he used spam and eggs instead. Get over it folks, and welcome to Python.
ByWilly

Python 3 for Absolute Beginners

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Python 3 for Absolute Beginners, Tim Hall and J-P Stacey, Apress (ISBN: 978-1-4302-1632-2)

Disclaimer: I was asked to review this book through the Hampshire Linux User Group. I did not receive any instruction for the outcome of the review nor any payment for the review (though I did get to keep the book).

I believe it is important to know something about a reviewer of a book, so that the statements made can be fully appreciated. I am a Software Developer, so spend most of my day reading and writing code. These days it is mostly Perl and Java, though some days it is all C++. I have never written Python before, though I have poked at about two scripts (and even made a fix to one), but it is probably fair to say that I have spent less than an hour looking at Python code before reading this book.

The book does actually mention that the source code examples are available for download from [...] however it is mentioned on the first inside page where all the copyright information is (and which you normally skip over automatically). If you want the exapmles, they are at [...]

The book opens fairly well for a beginners book, and seems strongly aimed at someone who has never programmed before (I have heard lots of people recommending Python as a good language to teach yourself programming with and can understand why). I was pleased to an early reference to Monty Python as well, as this is where the name Python comes from.

The use of Python's interactive interpreter is excellent and it makes for great examples of simple parts of the language, while also being so short that you actually want to type them into your computer and try them out! In particular the author's use of Pythons interpreter to print out details of a data-type or variable, and even the outcome of comparisons (e.g. entering "1==2" into the Python interpreter returns "False" without having to actually use a print statement or any other debug methods which I think is fantastic for a new programmer and a real time saver)

It is a shame that the author fails to stress the differences between Python 2.x and 3.x strongly enough. While some code will work on both versions, there are very large changes and it should have been made more clear early on that Python 2.x code is unlikely to work in Python 3.x, and vice-versa, as I would expect users to also seek examples on the web and it will just be confusing if the examples don't work because of changes between versions of Python.

By chapter two some software design principles have been introduced alongside the first actual program, which is of course "hello world". The author spends a long time talking about Software Engineering and Design principles, which is all valuable information, but I doubt many readers will actually spend time reading this and will instead skip over it. It does cover pretty much everything from design approaches (inside-out vs top-down) all the way to code control, versioning, comments, documentation, etc so certainly tries to cover all the bases.

The book then moves on to explaining variables and datatypes, operators and precedence, integers vs floats and all the core basics of a language. I initially thought that explanations of Octal and Hexadecimal values were perhaps a little advanced for a book aimed at "Absolute Beginners", but the author did make a good point that these are often used in file permissions and html colours and this makes them very useful to know.

The examples in the book start off short and sweet, but at some point the author had the idea to continually rework a text-based RPG game he invented for the book. The only problem with this is that you end up staring at several pages of code, and all you want to do then is skip over it, and then start skipping the explanations of this long code. I think the author was trying to teach some good refactoring techniques throughout the book by using this larger piece of code, however I feel that shorter, separate examples would have been easier to understand.
By Anton