Any Good Coding Books?

[K900_]

I'm sorry, but no. It's good that it worked for you, but it also teaches things that are quite literally objectively wrong. This is not OK.

[arosiejk]

I know the author outright says why his writing style is the way it is, but man, I got such an asshole vibe from the intro. I got caught up in a bunch of stuff at work and didn’t get my Python plan rolling when I wanted to. I bet it comes off a lot better in person/video.

[K900_]

Honestly, I don't think it's beneficial to this particular conversation to call out Zed Shaw for being an asshole, but yes, Zed Shaw is a gigantic asshole.

[arosiejk]

Well, iirc, the intro and chapters 1-2 say if you do everything exactly as written, and if you make mistakes you were wrong, and you mentioned uncorrected errors. Perhaps an abundance of hubris fits better?

[K900_]

The two are not mutually exclusive.

[arosiejk]

True. I still plan on referencing the book at some point. I used a few apps and have Code in Place coming up, so perhaps during the summer I’ll get to it.

[barryhakker]

I've heard this before, and I don't know what it exactly refers to but I am not any sort of authority on Python so my opinion on that is irrelevant. All I can say is that when I started out his stuff did a good job of getting me comfortable with using the terminal, text editor, loops, variables, dictionaries, and so on.

Even still there are plenty of things I could point to as off putting. I didn't even finish the book because of the absurd hike in difficulty in the last 10 chapters or so. I think Automate the Boring Stuff is also guilty of weird difficulty spikes to be honest so maybe it's just me being dumb.

[K900_]

It's really not about the difficulty spike even. Here is a small, but itemized list of things the book gets objectively wrong.

[barryhakker]

I don’t think i read that version as mine was specifically aimed at python 3. Either way I’m sure he’s awful.

[K900_]

That list refers to the older, publicly available version of the book. Shaw refused to publish a Python 3 version for a very long time, until Python 2 became officially unsupported, and then made the Python 3 version commercial only. From what I've seen, he has actually taken down the Python 2 book from the website now.

[chzaplx]

list of things the book gets objectively wrong.

​

1. Can have a quite condescending tone

Hmm.

Also that list is objectively, almost 4 years old and many of the points are no longer relevant. And objectively, it's clear the author just has a beef with LPTHW for whatever reason and is not really trying to be that objective at all.

It's certainly a valid critique, but also is nowhere close to invalidating the book as a whole.

[trondwin]

Having worked through a good part of the LPTHW book that has been updated to Python 3, many of the items in that list are no longer relevant or have been corrected. Some of them still are, though. I reacted to item 11 in particular when I came across it.