a python book hint

[Michele Simionato]

claird at lairds.com (Cameron Laird) wrote in message news:<vr7ksd801ks80d at corp.supernews.com>...
> I've been writing and rewriting a review of *TPIP* since (before?) its
> publication (to David's frustration--it'd be better for him if I just
> published *something* about it, rather than reworking so much).  *I*
> don't think it's for beginners, and in fact I think it's going to lose
> a lot of the current crop of professionals.  I like the book, but I
> think it's too demanding for many of the people who might consider it.
> 
> I've been surprised, though, how much enthusiasm it's inspired already
> in readers I've encountered.
> 
> My conclusion:  I solicit others' views and experience.

too demanding ???

A book can be too demanding when it requires the reader to follow a
too
hard path, meaning that there is an easier, maybe longer, but
equivalent
path; but a text that take a not-so-trivial matter as text processing
and
make it as simple as it can be, is not at all too demanding. It is
just the
opposite! 

One cannot pretend to learn text processing without a minimal effort,
unless
he limits himself to a very superficial study; I found David's text
really
good in the sense of being not more difficult than needed, not too
much
"academic" but also not too much "practical" (here "practical" means
giving
a set of practical recipes without any better understanding behind).

Alex was right not to cite this book to the OP, since it is NOT a text
for
Python beginners; actually, in my view, it is not a Python book at
all. It
is a book on *text processing*: the fact that the chosen language is
Python
is somewhat secondary, the same concepts could have been expressed in
any
other language (even if not as well as in Python, of course ;).

TPiP is a good book for someone who wants to understand (some of) the
theory
behind text processing, as well as the practice (I value very much the
practice, only I think it should not be disconnected from the theory).
It is not a reference book, nor a book of recipes: it is kinda of a
textbook.

IMO, it is especially suitable to "non-canonical" programmers, people
without
a computer science background, which still need or want to learn
something about
parsers, state machines and all the rest, without going trough a real
CS
course. David is well qualified to understand what are the likely gaps
of
non-canonical programmers, since himself has a background in
philosophy,
not in CS and it is clear he learned what it is in his book through
self-study
(David correct me if I am wrong). OTOH, people with a CS background
often give a
lot of things for obvious (who said 'reduce' was obvious ?;) which are
not
obvious to us "amateur" programmers, so they are less effective as
teachers
(outside academia, I mean).

BTW, I read TPiP when it was in fieri, before starting my
collaboration with
David, so my opinion on the book is not affected by my following work
with
him (actually the opposite is true).


                  Michele Simionato

P.S. I could say equally positive things both for the cookbook and
"Python
in a nutshell", they are *really* good books, but they are *different*
books:
they cannot be put in the same category as TPiP, just because they
share the word "Python" in the title. The same for "Dive into Python"
and "Thinking
as a computer scientists": they are all excellent books, but they have
different scope and aims.