A little disappointed so far

[Alex Martelli]

<posted & mailed>

Graham Nicholls wrote:

> Erik Max Francis wrote:
> 
>> Graham Nicholls wrote:
>> 
>>> 1.  Documentation - there are no good, up to date books ...
>> 
>> There's really no one to blame for this; published books and references
>> always lag behind releases.  Quite a few books deal with 2.x features.
> Did I attribute blame?  I don't care why - but I do care that I may be
> learning things the "wrong" way.  How long has 2.x been around? and what
> books do cover it well?

I see that most of your assertions have been repeatedly answered (including
this one with brief mentions of "Python in a Nutshell"), but (as the author
of the latter) I have specific personal reasons to be very curious indeed
about this one.  What could possibly prompt you to make it?  I.e., were you
unaware of "Python in a Nutshell", or aware of it but choosing to entirely
snub it for some specific reason?

It's hardly been "kept under a bushel", after all -- it's been the
best-selling Python book on both amazon.com and amazon.co.uk for months,
for example (even though the UK reaction to it is distinctly more tepid
than the US one -- and if I could find out whether this is due to some
intrinsic issue, or to ones of marketing and promotion, I might perhaps be
able to do better in the future).  It's been slashdotted, reviewed on
Unix Review, mentioned as "book of the month" in Byte, discussed many
times on this group -- what more could or should I have done to make you
aware of its existence?  Yet the apodictic tone of your assertion does
suggest you thought you had good reasons to believe it didn't exist --
you appear to be asserting such books' non-existence with total assuredness,
which surely affords an inference that you had some reasons to be convinced
of that.  So, is your implication that the Nutshell isn't good, or that
it isn't up to date, or that it's "as well as nonexistent"?  I would be
quite curious to understand this better.


Alex