Book Recommendation

[David Mertz]

I get a lot of books as an author/reviewer. In fact, you can find my
reviews of most of these, easily enough. The side effect is that my
shelves have a lot of books that I'm not realistically going to look at
anymore.

I would be very happy to send the below titles to anyone who will pay
for shipping (maybe a buck or two extra for my effort). Most of these
are listed on TextbookX.com too (for little cost), but for a long time
without buyers. Of course, some books I like better than others; I
kinda hate to get someone started on a book that isn't as good, even for
free... and most of them have at least some merit:

Jython Essentials
Jython for Java Programmers
Python Manual Pages (Dossier Press, no ISBN)
Python Library Reference (ditto)
Python Miscellanea (ditto)
XML Pocket Guide (x2)
Python Pocket Reference (1st and 2nd ed)
Python Programming on Win32
Perl 5 Howto
Python Programming Patterns
Core Python Programming
Web Programming in PYthon
Visual Quickstart Guide Python
The Quick Python Book
The Zope Book
Zope Web Application Development and Content Management
Python and Tkinter
GUI Programming with Python: Using the QT Toolkit
Programming with Python
Java Developer's Guid to Servlets and JSP
MySQL (A! Press)
MySQL: Building User Interfaces

Well, those are just the ones I can see from my chair (I throw in a
couple that are not Python). I probably have a few more if I were to
walk to the next room .

Email me if interested.

Yours, David...

 

[Alan Gauld]

replies, and honesty. I can't believe my core python programming book is
outdated my mom just purchased it. please tell me it's still readable

Its a very good introductory text. It is outdated in that the
version it uses is now out of date but 95% (at least) is still
perfectly valid and 99% will work as is, there just might be
better more recent ways.

Python develops at a fairly rapid rate so that any book will go
out of date quickly. My own book started using 1.5.1, finished
using 1.5.2 but the current version by the time of release was
2.0 (which I put on the CD). You just can't keep up with the
changes and write a good book too (IMHO).

If you like the style of Core Python stick with it, its as good
as any other. Then read the online tutor which gets updated with
each language version so you can pick up whats changed.

If you don;t like the style then the other suggestions are all
valid too.

Alan G.
Author of the Learn to Program website
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld

 

[Anthony]

Hello I'm currently trying to read Core Python Programming, but by the
looks of it im never going to get done the book is about 860 pages long
real intimidating, but im guess im going to have to stick in there. have
any of you ever read it? is it a good book? if not what do you suggest i
read. Please help me i'm eager to learn

Thanks

That covers just about all my answers thanks guys I'll keep in touch
asking questions, etc. I just finished 16 excercises at the end of chapter
2 in my book it's great i love it, after each chapter I'll look at the
reference on python.org to get a better understanding of everything i went
over in there, thanks alot you guys and when I'm famous you all will be
compensated

Thanks

 

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

Anthony fed this fish to the penguins on Thursday 09 October 2003 05:32
am:

Ok you guys I got everything you guys are the best thanks for all your
replies, and honesty. I can't believe my core python programming book
is outdated my mom just purchased it. please tell me it's still

Take a look at the copyright date (after all, they may have put out a
revised edition that I don't know about). If it shows 199x it is fairly
old. Even the Python Essential Reference had a second edition dated the
summer of 2001 -- and the cover blurb emphasizes "Updated to Python
2.1"; we're now up to 2.3, and as I recall, the change from 2.1 to 2.2
was a touch big (P.E.R. doesn't seem to cover the new style classes).

readable i read the first 2 chapters of it after the original posting,

It should be usable for the basic language, but will lack some on the
newer changes. Does it have a section on new vs old classes? The change
in exceptions from just strings to a class hierarchy? List
Comprehensions? String methods (the newer releases let you do things
like:

wds = "This is a long String".split()

which in older versions required the string module:

import string
wds = string.split("This is a long String")


Python's pretty dynamic -- getting a new version almost yearly (not
counting any bug fix subreleases).
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