Netscan and Python

[Martin Christensen]

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>>>>> "Nelson" == Nelson Minar <nelson at monkey.org> writes:
Nelson> Another random thought - folks often look at the relative lack
Nelson> of Python books vs. Perl books as a sign of Python's
Nelson> weakness. Isn't it strength? Python is so simple and the
Nelson> online docs are so good I never even thought about learning it
Nelson> from a book.

I wouldn't think so. The online documentation (mostly the Python
library documentation) is where I go to have most of my Python
questions answered, but that sort of documentation cannot and should
not cover everything. Consider, for instance, David Mertz' book 'Text
Processing in Python' (http://gnosis.cx/TPiP/). It uses several
hundred pages to expand on topics that in the Python library reference
is covered in only a few pages, this because they have very different
aims: the library reference exists to give a brief overview of the
capabilities of each module, and TPiP is a complete topic guide to
text processing.

I've learnt Python almost exclusively from online documentation, too.
However, for in-depth discussions of more advanced topics, I've found
Python in a Nutshell and The Python Cookbook to be invaluable, and
I've definitely gained insight from them that I would not have from
the online documentation. On the other hand, not all books are
worthwhile, and as such I've still not demanded my copy of Andre
Lessa's Python Developer's Handbook back from the friend I lent it to,
since I've found it both less informative and practical than the
library reference, and indeed it seems to be little but a reworded
version of said library reference.

So in short, books are invaluable for digging deeper than most online
documentation does. Of course, it's fortunate that we are blessed with
some of these books being also made available online.

Martin

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