ANN: Dive Into Python published

[Mark Pilgrim]

I am pleased to announce that my Python book "Dive Into Python" is now
available on paper, published by Apress and weighing in at 432 pages.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1590593561/ref%3Dnosim/diveintomark20/

More information, and a complete online edition, is available at
<http://diveintopython.org/>.

Without Apress' financial support, this book would have languished
half-written and self-published, full of typos and technical mistakes.
Even if you have read the online edition, please consider buying a
copy.

===== obligatory back cover blurb follows =====

This is a practical book aimed at busy developers.  Every chapter takes
a real piece of code and turns it inside out until you can't help but
understand it.  If there is background information you need to know,
you'll learn it along the way.  But you won't find long-winded
treatises on the aesthetics of API design or the history of computer
science.  I don't have time for that, and neither do you.

And yet, as practical as this book is, there is a touch of passion in
it.  I fell in love with Python the day I found it.  Did I fall in love
because of some abstract sense of elegance or style?  No, I fell in
love because it works and doesn't get in my way.  The standard
libraries are robust and easy to use.  The syntax is not picky or
arcane.  Developing in Python is like writing pseudo-code that works.
After a decade of experience with dogmatic languages, Python is a
breath of fresh air.

This book covers the basics of Python datatypes, from lists to
dictionaries to tuples and beyond.  You'll learn about the power of
introspection; Python's powerful object model; regular expressions;
HTML and XML processing; web services; unit testing; performance
tuning; and the newest language features added in Python 2.3: iterators
and generators.

I hope this book makes you fall in love with Python.  But if not,
that's okay.  You'll learn plenty anyway, and my passion can be enough
for both of us.

--
Mark Pilgrim