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

Download here: http://ouo.io/klPLUP

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