Python Book

[Magnus Lycka]

David Rasmussen wrote:
> What is the best book for Python newbies (seasoned programmer in other 
> languages)?

I think most of the best books have been mentioned, but I thought
that I'd add some comments. After all, different people have different
ways of learning, and like different book styles.

Both Martelli's "Python in a Nutshell" and Beazley's "Python Essential
Reference" are mainly reference books. In a way, the standard library
manual contains the same information, but Martelli's and Beazley's
books explain things much better, and at least Martelli goes into a
number of things outside the standard library. They have brief Python
tutorials, but don't go into things like writing any larger programs
involving things from several libraries etc. They are excellent if you
want a high information density.

The Python Cookbook mainly contains stuff from the Python Cookbook web
site, but it's carefully selected, well edited (although a redundant
line of code in my recipe remains) and in each chapter there is an
initial discussion which is interesting. It's a great source of good
Python code examples with explanations.

If you prefer books that are more in Tutorial style, you might want
to look at Dive Into Python (try it out in the web version first) or
Magnus Hetland's new book (which is basically an update of his previous
book with a different title.) I think the Python 2.1 Bible was good
too, but it's a bit old by now.

Then there are a lot of other books that are more narrow in scope, like
Holden's Web Programming book, Ascher & Robinson's Windows book etc,
but most of them are a few years old, and things change rapidly when
it comes to libraries and tools in various niches. Many of these books
are still very good and useful, but it takes some familarity with the
Python world to know what to use in these books, and what to find more
current information for.

I hope you'll have a great time with Python!