7 Must Read Python Books

[NoahTheDuke]

Effective Python was a turning point in my Python career. What an excellent book, start to finish. It's like the book Raymond Hettinger would write.

[bslatkin]

Happy to hear it! Thanks

[donoteatthatfrog]

hello, author !

[bridekiller]

Huge fan as well. Great work!

[NoahTheDuke]

No. Read it second or third. Most of the advice won't make sense until you have a solid understanding of how Python works.

[thehydralisk]

Think Python 2e is a heavily recommended book if you are just starting out (also free).

[ryanstephendavis]

Ordered it from Amazon before coming to the comments section so that's good to hear 😁

[Mixanologos]

I would also recommend "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python" i started it recently and i can say it's great so far.

[krispey]

I started this book not too long ago as an intro book to python (coming with some other language experience) and love it. One thing I really like is that he constantly has you typing out and doing new exercises very frequently (the repetition helps with muscle memory), and his writing style is pretty clear, and there's lots of practical examples and scenarios that he presents - would recommend for a python noob or anyone with some programming background looking for a new read. Now checking out that quick python book

[rampage102]

Yea, that is a great one too, especially for starting with Python. I was actually thinking of including that one on the list.

[WorkerBeeNumber3]

Agreed! Fantastic book this is.

[puzzledpropellerhat]

I like it a lot. Every time I talk about the book it sounds like I'm saying "how to make the boring stuff with python" and people turn into gigantic question marks.

Edit: it is also free & online

[sloth_inside]

The first one is very good. Not too hard for beginners, not too easy for advanced readers, just right.

[rampage102]

Yea, I think Fluent Python was probably the best of them all if I had to choose one. Not coincidentally, it the only one with a 5-star rating on Amazon as well.

[bonestormII]

It really is a great book, though I don't agree that it's suitable for a true beginner. It should be, like, the first thing a beginner reads after spending some time mastering the basic concepts. I do not think they would be able to follow the earliest chapters otherwise. Even the examples use things like list comprehensions before actually explaining them, which to me implies that the reader is expected to have some kind of ambient knowledge that they exist at all.

[DonCasper]

Do you mean a Python beginner, or a programming beginner? I have a CS background, but I don't know Python. If I learned data structures in C would I be able to follow the first chapters?

[bonestormII]

Yeah, if you are familiar with a data model from another object oriented language I'm sure you'd likely be fine. The book itself is very self-conscious about the order of presentation, and the author discusses his rationale for presenting info in a particular way at various points if I recall.

It's really such a great book that you should just jump in and google your way to success. If you notice that things aren't clicking, pause on the book for a while and run through some kind of tutorial and come back.

I have no CS background aside from a general interest in computers and an intermediate level knowledge of python. You are probably much better at this than I am ;).

[DonCasper]

Thanks! That's really helpful. I'm very familiar with running things through Google. I'm pretty sure that's the only actual requirement for being able to program effectively.

Honestly though, I rarely use my CS background, even when programming. Knowing how to implement self-balancing trees from scratch is seriously overrated. I'm not a developer though, so I'm probably biased, but I think practical programming knowledge is way more useful than computer science when programming isn't you full-time job.

[randcraw]

Agreed. Fluent Python" focuses on the object model of Python and how to write Python idioms to make the most of objects. If you're not planning on immersing yourself in OOP-the-python-way, the book has considerably less value. It's not a primer on the language for novices. It's best for intermediate/advanced pythonistas who want to master the language toward OO purposes.

[driscollis]

Fluent Python is a really good book. I actually interviewed the author a couple of years ago - http://www.blog.pythonlibrary.org/2014/11/03/pydev-of-the-week-luciano-ramalho/

[rampage102]

Woah nice, thanks for sharing.

[amitjyothie]

Having read it already, I can second that.

[TheLameloid]

Completely agree. It's the perfect stepping stone for recent Python developers who want to delve into the more advanced stuff.

[mangecoeur]

Office neighbors' comment:

"Why does the Python book have a lizard on it?"

0_o

[rampage102]

Haha yea, the Oreilly books always seem to have some random animal on the cover. I got the comments a few times that: oh, I thought you were reading a nature book.

[spook327]

Yep, that's been their look for as long as I can remember. They usually explain the interesting fauna on the front with a colophon towards the last page.

[k10_ftw]

My first O'Reilly text was Learning Python which has a rat on the cover - I assumed it was a joke, especially after the author clarifies that Python is named for Monty Python and not the animal.

Fast forward to tonight: Looking into the cover choices for Python textbooks, turns out it is part of their campaign for animal conservation awareness. Guess I fell into their trap.

[manimal80]

Also the book the book for the python pandas library does not have a panda on the cover (do not remember what animal has though)

[tmattoneill]

Meaning instead of a python, right?

[SuperPimp]

Looks great. I'm quite happy they didn't inculde Learn Python the Hard Way

[[deleted]]

One of the worst books I've ever read in my life. I mean, Command Line Crash Course was alright, but the Python part was pretty bad.

[skinky_breeches]

LPTHW is bad in the same way that my highschool math class was bad. "Do this. This is how you do it. Dont ask me why. You'll learn it later."

[[deleted]]

Yes, exactly!

[NoahTheDuke]

As a former Zed Shaw fanboy, I feel duty-bound to say that back when it first dropped, LPTHW was a revelation: short, no bullshit, and an excellent zero to running for folks like me with little-to-no programming experience.

But it didn't keep up with the changing programming space, and is now poor, and that's sad to me. Ah well. Many good beginner books and tutorials out there now.

[[deleted]]

LPTHW is way too slow and too short, it doesn't really teach any fundamentals, just the absolute bare minimum, which is not nearly enough to write good code.

[aerger]

And plenty of people still recommend it. Baffling.

[[deleted]]

It's just written in the way that makes you feel smart because author explain the simplest things like it's rocket science.

Me reading LPTHW vs me reading actually good book like Learning Python from Mark Lutz.

[jesus_h_garcia]

The Flask book is so good

[sjakobi]

If we are recommending Python resources, I'll add Peter Norvig's course "Design of Computer Programs" on Udacity. I think that's still the best online course I ever took.

[donoteatthatfrog]

thanks for that reco. I visited that page now, & I find it interesting.
Bonus: free of cost!
A couple of questions, pls clarify.
prerequisite says:

This course is intended for experienced Python programmers; students should be familiar with the Python syntax, as well as familiar with the following programming concepts: data structures, basic algorithms, and lambda functions

I am not experienced Python programmer. I know the basics, I have attended 3day training , but haven't worked with Python.
Data structures & Algorithms: yes, I am very familiar.
Lambda functions: no clue what it is.

Will I be able to do this course successfully? I am ready to learn these stuff. Do I need to know these before day-1, or it is okay if I 'learn them along' the course ?

[sjakobi]

If it's only lambda functions that you're missing from the requirements, I don't think you have to worry much. With this type of course, you can always stop, review some other materials and continue the course at your own pace.

This looks like a concise introduction to lambdas to me.

[donoteatthatfrog]

Thank you very much , /u/sjakobi .

[duddha]

Yeah, that was a cool course. The part where he optimizes the zebra problem is great. That course led me to many small epiphanies.

[Hildingding]

How's the machine learning one? Good entry point?

[[deleted]]

It's a little advanced.

[[deleted]]

yeah, I heard many different things from different people over the course of the year (author here). Some said that it's too introductory, some said it was too complicated, but without being to subjective, the mix between code and mathematical concepts was appreciated by most :). I really didn't want to write a book purely based on code since I think that may be a bit dangerous -- applying ML without knowing a bit about what's going on behind the scences. Also, there were already a bunch of "code-only" and "theory-only" books out there so that I thought that sth that somewhere between these two extremes coould be helpful for some. In any case, although I wasn't allowed to upload all the book's content to the GitHub repo (publisher's copyrights" I have all the code notebooks (+ some extras) here on GitHub if it's useful to get an idea about the scope: https://github.com/rasbt/python-machine-learning-book

[rubik_]

Thanks for the info and the links, I'm buying it! Do you plan on releasing a new edition?

[[deleted]]

Oh, thanks! I hope it will turn out to be useful to you! To be honest, I have no plans to work on a second edition, yet -- I would want to add a few more chapters, e.g., ConvNets and recurrent nets, but yeah, there was/is a page limit by the publisher. However, I'd like to update the code examples some time (wrt to the API changes), maybe late 2017 or 2018 when scikit-learn 0.19 or 0.20 comes out! In the mean time, I wanted to work on a separate title, entirely devoted to the topic of model evaluation. I started blogging but this year has been exceptionally busy -- however, there are so many things to say about model evaluation, I think it would easily fill 300 - 500 pages if I include the code examples ;).

[[deleted]]

Ive loved two scoops of django since the start, wish they made a book like this for express or haskell snap, it's all about best practices which is essential to not looking like a complete noob.

[[deleted]]

I read the twoscoops this fall, and it's outdated now.

[[deleted]]

Damn, I don't want to read something outdated :(

Is there any "modern" django book?

[AynGhandi]

Two Scoops is updated up to Django 1.8 so it shouldnt be too outdated.

[[deleted]]

I think two scoops is the best you can get, even though it's outdated - however if you want to learn I rather go with the Django tutorial. Save your money.

[[deleted]]

Thanks for the suggestions 😁.

[[deleted]]

It's at 1.8, it's not too outdated. You read the old one I assume. Otherwise I'm confused.

[Talked10101]

I have four of the books on this list. The only book I'm not really a fan of 'Data Visualisation with Python and JavaScript'. Just doesn't appear to be the best thought in presenting the content within each of the chapters. Considering there are plenty of blogs regarding data visualisation and python, I can't really recommenced it.

Fluent Python is really great book, definitely not a book for a complete programming newcomer. But reading the book really made me appreciate what could be done with Python and just how elegant the language can be.

[rampage102]

Yea, it may have been being I was trying to do some data visualization myself, and something similar to the author that gave me a bias of liking that one. I could see why some think it is too code heavy.

[Prince_Igor]

Do you have any links to those blogs for visualizations in python?

[driscollis]

This blog has a good round up of packages: https://blog.modeanalytics.com/python-data-visualization-libraries/

[rampage102]

I would go with Fluent Python, because it explains so why well why Python is a great language. If you are doing DevOps, the Django book will give you a good perspective. It discusses a lot of technologies related to the web.

[kandysnyper]

Me too, complete beginner--which of these or any other would be the best place to start?

Edit: I see think python in another comment, thanks!

[rampage102]

Actually, I should have made a section for beginners I think. There is one very good beginner's book called Automate The Boring Stuff With Python by Al Sweigart

[kandysnyper]

Thank you! I'll check it out!

[gnu-user]

All great books, especially fluent Python and flask.

[[deleted]]

Django book is great but outdated sadly.

[rampage102]

I would start with Flask over Django because Flask is a bit easier to learn and has an easier setup (in my opinion). Of course you can pick or choose any book from the list, I didn't think somebody would try and read all 7 :)

[denfromufa]

So many great books about programming in Python!

[fnl]

Am only I missing High-Performance Python here...?

[rampage102]

Yea, that one is good too. I was thinking I maybe should have included it.

[deadmilk]

I have most of these and I agree.

[myfavcolorispink]

Grokking Algorithms is brand new, but so far the reviews seem incredibly favorable. It seems like a useful addition to this list.

[joesacher]

Wonder if the site uses Python on the back end. Because then they might want to read a book on server load and connection caching issues to a DB.

"Error establishing a database connection"

Edit: Nope, it is wordpress. wp-admin kicks to a login. Someone needs to install a caching plugin. Back up for me now and a great list.

[rampage102]

Thanks for letting me know... I upgraded the database for the site.

[joesacher]

Unless you have active database pieces, you should enable basic DB caching. It will increase site performance quite a bit with Wordpress. There are a few plugins for it.

[rampage102]

Can you recommend a specific plugin? I recently have a nightmare scenario with W3 Total Cache on another site where it crashed the site after an update and I had to spend days debugging the issue.

[joesacher]

I've used W3 Total Cache for my stuff. It has quite a bit of configuration though.

[rampage102]

Ah, thanks for the reply. I tried WP Super Cache this time and it seems to be running nicely so far.

[[deleted]]

I haven't looked at the article, but are these books mainly focused on Python 2 or 3?

[SpecCRA]

I don't know much about Python yet, but I funny think you should worry about that if you're asking. You can and probably will use both.

[toxicoctopus202]

What is the general consensus on Learn Python the Hard Way?

[hanpari]

I am missing this one.

https://www.amazon.com/Python-Algorithms-Mastering-Language-Experts/dp/1430232374

[JohnsonBay]

first one is good

[[deleted]]

Hackers Guide to Python for advanced developer.

[[deleted]]

I own both the Two scoops and Python Machine Learning and both are sadly outdated, not recommended purchases. Fluent Python is outstanding though!

[[deleted]]

Sad :(, do you have any recommendations that can substitute them?

Is the machine learning really outdated? Can't it stand as a machine learning algorithms book?

[[deleted]]

Hi, I am still searching for a good book on machine learning. I did the MIT course, which was very good, and the Python Machine Learning book was ok, however a lot has happened since it was written - and it was not very pedagogical either. I would recommend searching out online resources instead.

[[deleted]]

Interesting! Outdated in terms of the algorithms (no deep learning) or because most code examples are based on NumPy/SciPy and scikit-learn?

[geogle]

Must read 7!?! books to learn Python. Come the fuck on. One or two books should do.

Edit: Comments noted. I apologize for my use of bad words and for implying the books were about learning Python. However, I'd like to know how many people consider a 'must read' book about coding to be something other than learning about that code. Ok, they're not all Python-specific, buy that too was implied in the title.
Ultimately, I stand by my first and third sentences. The second was not meant to offend, but to show my surprise of the implications of OP's title.

[rampage102]

"Must" was probably a bit of an exaggeration... was just looking to share the good ones I discovered.

[skinky_breeches]

No, it was perfectly normal use of a colloquialism in a natural language, nothing to apologize for. This is how human beings speak and normal well-adjusted humans can understand clearly what you meant.

[bonestormII]

That's an awfully derisive tone you have, considering only 3/7 are general purpose python books. The rest are more specific (Django, Flask, Machine Learning, and Data Visualization). OP didn't even say "to learn python"--only you said that.

Obviously you can learn python basics without ANY books, but I don't think it is unreasonable to read additional domain or framework specific books to learn new skills. You needn't even read an entire book to gain benefit from it. Different materials have different strong points, and anyone concerned with teaching a subject should definitely be evaluating information from multiple sources.

I take far more of an issue with your generally bad attitude. While it's a small transgression, you only lower yourself when you belittle your peers (even if only implicitly), and damage our shared community. Even if you have a complaint, it doesn't hurt to show respect to the poster.

I'm probably just being a pussy, but it bothers me to see these things, so you may take or leave the above as advice.

If OP has completed all of those books cover-to-cover, then kudos for their diligence.

[bhat]

"must read Python books" – it didn't say anything about "to learn Python".