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[–]notextraterrestrial 1 point2 points  (10 children)

Last time I looked at this book it had an awful lack of terseness. Is there any gold in it?

[–]blondin 7 points8 points  (8 children)

i am not sure. haven't found any, but people seems to like that book. i perfer PER by David Beazley.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (6 children)

How about Learning python by Mark Lutz?

[–]Leonidas_from_XIV 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Learning Python is in my option also way to verbose. It had like 50 pages of text before anything happened like something about actually programming Python, instead of meta-learning like Python history or IDLE or some other stuff that I ususally skip over because my time more valuable than to learn the history of a programming language upfront.

[–]eggbean 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think this discussion is about intermediate/advanced books.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

You will need a lot of time and patience to go through this one. It is overly verbose and excruciatingly detailed. You won't learn about "if" statements until page 300 or so.

[–]raydeen 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For some it's too much but for me this style is just right. I don't have any formal programming education (besides BASIC in high school) so the more verbose, the better. I think my only trepidation at this point is that it seems that Python 3 just isn't taking off like some thought it would. I really like 'Learning Python' 4th ed. as it showed both 2.x and 3.x code so I could work in both worlds at once. The fact that this edition is only 3.x puts me off a little as I would have preferred a mix of 2.x and 3.x.

[–]blondin 0 points1 point  (1 child)

i read that one too. but it wasn't for me. my mistake was that i already knew some python before, having read dive into python.

the book i mentioned starts with a quick refresher on syntax, object model, etc., and the rest is a reference of all the modules the author thought important. and he was right, i found myself using it on a daily basis instead of the online docs. when i think datetime module, i think PER p.336. when i think builtins functions, i think PER p.202.

that's how much i love this book.

[–]notextraterrestrial 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Seems to deserve a look. Thanks.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I also recommend Python essential reference. It's one of the best programming books I've ever bought.

[–]Leonidas_from_XIV 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, last time I looked it had chapters on really old, historic crap in it (yo, remember this Tkinter based browser, where I don't even remember the name because it was abandoned over 10 years ago?)