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Show HN: I wrote a book about Python

pragprog.com

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Re: Show HN: I wrote a book about Python

#21

Post by muunbo »

gota wrote: post #18
dmuller wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Python definitely has its drawbacks, and it's not fast. The other downsides listed in that article (whitespace, variable scoping, lambdas, mobile, etc.) may also be get in your way sometimes, but seems doubtful that they are language killers...I agree the argument presented in that article is weak. I'm biased, but I think Python as your daily driver language is a great choice.

Preamble: I like Python - it seems to fit my mental models well, and I'm productive writing in it. However, only just recently I tried to develop a more-than-trivial program to deploy as an executable for my Windows-using friends. This may sound naive, but I'd never thought about how hard it is, especially when mostly everything else in Python is well-tooled, well-documented, and works. If you check my post history y…

'Nuitka' might be what you're looking for

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book about Python

#22

Post by albatross13 »

dmuller wrote: post #2

Hi everyone, Last year, I was lucky enough to sign a book deal with The Pragmatic Bookshelf to write an intermediate level book on Python. (The Pragmatic Bookshelf is the publishing company founded by the authors of one of my favorite programming books: The Pragmatic Programmer.) Having written Python most of my professional career, I wanted a resource that I could give to engineers who might have deeper experience i…

I'd like to give my congrats as well, writing a book is no easy feat. That's awesome and congratulations!

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book about Python

#23

Post by gota »

muunbo wrote: post #21
gota wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preamble: I like Python - it seems to fit my mental models well, and I'm productive writing in it. However, only just recently I tried to develop a more-than-trivial program to deploy as an executable for my Windows-using friends. This may sound naive, but I'd never thought about how hard it is, especially when mostly everything else in Python is well-tooled, well-documented, and works. If you check my post history y…

'Nuitka' might be what you're looking for

Hey, I did try it - it was how I got it to work at all. Relatively simpler than the alternatives, IMHO, but still suffering from the large executable size due to dependency cascades

I'm at peace, now, with having to prune and bound my imports to account for that. But it is a negative thing that I have to change my code from what it'd normally be to make it remotely passable...

This is definitely a relatively smalln and maybe rare, but still a disadvantage of Python (that, in retrospect, I should've obviously have anticipated, so that's on me)

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book about Python

#24

Post by roywashere »

dmuller wrote: post #4
okareaman wrote: post #3

Congratulations on your book! I am fortunate enough to know quite a few languages, so I decided to pick one for all my needs and it seemed Python fit them. Then I recently read on HN "Why Python is not the Language of the Future" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27562931 The arguments put forth seemed weak, but wondered what you thought

I think Python definitely has its drawbacks, and it's not fast. The other downsides listed in that article (whitespace, variable scoping, lambdas, mobile, etc.) may also be get in your way sometimes, but seems doubtful that they are language killers...I agree the argument presented in that article is weak. I'm biased, but I think Python as your daily driver language is a great choice.

Also, the article states:

> Python is slow. Like, really slow. On average, you’ll need about 2–10 times longer to complete a task with Python than with any other language.

But that is real nonsense. It is comparable with Ruby or Perl or other dynamic languages.

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book about Python

#25

Post by dmuller »

mraza007 wrote: post #9
dmuller wrote: post #2

Hi everyone, Last year, I was lucky enough to sign a book deal with The Pragmatic Bookshelf to write an intermediate level book on Python. (The Pragmatic Bookshelf is the publishing company founded by the authors of one of my favorite programming books: The Pragmatic Programmer.) Having written Python most of my professional career, I wanted a resource that I could give to engineers who might have deeper experience i…

Hey man just wanted to say congratulations on publishing this book. As I python developer myself do you think I can use this book to further advance my knowledge of python

Hey - thanks I appreciate it.

I'd take a look at the table of contents and see if any of the topics look familiar/unfamiliar to you. The preface excerpt (http://media.pragprog.com/titles/dmpython/preface.pdf) also has a bit more detail about what's in each of the chapters. The book's content is probably most useful for someone newer to Python, but I still think there might be value in it depending your background

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book about Python

#26

Post by dmuller »

gota wrote: post #18
dmuller wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Python definitely has its drawbacks, and it's not fast. The other downsides listed in that article (whitespace, variable scoping, lambdas, mobile, etc.) may also be get in your way sometimes, but seems doubtful that they are language killers...I agree the argument presented in that article is weak. I'm biased, but I think Python as your daily driver language is a great choice.

Preamble: I like Python - it seems to fit my mental models well, and I'm productive writing in it. However, only just recently I tried to develop a more-than-trivial program to deploy as an executable for my Windows-using friends. This may sound naive, but I'd never thought about how hard it is, especially when mostly everything else in Python is well-tooled, well-documented, and works. If you check my post history y…

Hey - thanks for checking the book out.

Yeah, you are correct---the book does not cover packaging a Python program as a click and run style executable.

It's definitely a tricky problem. (Depending on the audience for the tools (e.g. if it's developers), one potential option might be to package your code in a Docker image and distribute it that way---although that's not without its own drawbacks.)

Other commenters have posted potential tools to check out too.

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book about Python

#28

Post by dmuller »

d0mine wrote: post #13

On "Calling Other Programs with subprocess": It pains me that the default way to run an external command ( subprocess.run ) doesn't raise an exception for non-zero exit code violating the Zen of Python: "Errors should never pass silently. Unless explicitly silenced." Would it make it too advanced to show subprocess.Popen example with stdin=PIPE for providing input instead of writing to disk? Or an example on how to f…

Yeah - I agree, I don't like the default behavior of subprocess.run either. As another commenter pointed out, passing the check=True argument makes subprocess.run raise an Exception if the underlying command doesn't return 0 (would have been nice if this was the default).

Those are two good use cases (using the lower level subprocess.Popen + process group signaling) that the book does not cover---thanks for bringing them up.

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book about Python

#29

Post by nuclearnice1 »

mumblemumble wrote: post #16
nuclearnice1 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And how exactly have they impeded Python's growth till now? Hard to be *exact* but presumably they have impeded growth in mobile? Swift has a 2% market share according to Google. Probably some performance people have migrated to rust or julia or stayed with the C family too?

I'm having a hard time seeing failure to take over mobile as a serious problem, any more than I see it as a serious problem that I can't take people waterskiing with my bicycle. I would even argue that many of the things that make my bike a terrible watercraft also happen to make it great as a light terrestrial vehicle. It's just possible that not every thing needs to be everything.

Does the wonderful bicycle analogy have grounding in the experience of Python?

Are there things about Python that make it great as a general programming languages, but not for mobile.

Perhaps the ease with which people reach for libs that wrap C? I dunno.

Re: Show HN: I wrote a book about Python

#30

Post by usrme »

Seeing as your title managed to land under the same publishing umbrella as (one of my own favorite programming books as well) The Pragmatic Programmer, do you have insight as to whether your title will also be made available on the O'Reilly platform?
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