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Dive Into Python 3 (online book)

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Re: Dive Into Python 3 (online book)

#21

Post by raster_blaster »

MostAwesomeDude wrote: post #5
kqr2 wrote: post #2

What's interesting is that according to the author Mark Pilgrim: Python 3 is a commercial disaster. In 2010Q3 I had negative sales of DiP3. More people returned it than bought it. I'm considering retro-fitting the book's content to Python 2.7 and re-releasing it as "Dive Into Python 2." Seriously. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/f545e/i_am_a_fourtime_...

DiP3 is not a very good book. (Neither was DiP.) I don't know how relevant that is to sales, though, but considering that some of the bigger Python groups actively recommend against it, I wouldn't be surprised if there was an impact on sales from that alone. Edit: I don't recommend learning Python from a book. I recommend http://docs.python.org/tutorial/ if you know a programming language already, or http://learnpyth…

Why's it not a good book? And who are the bigger groups that recommend against DiP3?

Re: Dive Into Python 3 (online book)

#22

Post by pilif »

People may complain all they want about the overall book or even Python 3 in general, but the chapter about strings (http://diveintopython3.org/strings.html) is amazingly good and will help you understand a lot about encodings, internal string representation and how to read/write strings to the outside world.

Of course a lot of the chapter is python 3 specific, but IMHO p3's handling of strings and encodings is very well done.

Provided that the strings you are going to deal with can be represented in Unicode, which still isn't always the case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_unification#Rationale_and_c...

Re: Dive Into Python 3 (online book)

#23

Post by enterneo »

Luyt wrote: post #20
frewsxcv wrote: post #8

I'm curious why people consider DiP to be a bad book? I personally can't defend it since I haven't read it

"This book is so full of bad initial examples and difficult to follow instructions that it actually hurts Python to have it exist. When beginners stumble onto it they end up getting discouraged and go on to another language. I personally have had too many friends who are eager to learn programming find this festering dung pile before I could warn them and get turned off from programming." - Zed Shaw

I do not agree. In fact, the insanely cool examples are what makes this book worth reading. This book is not for beginners but for programmers who have experience in some other language and are curious to know why python might be a better choice for them as their next high level language.

Re: Dive Into Python 3 (online book)

#24

Post by c4m »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #17
c4m wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it cover Python 3? I cannot tell from reading http://learnpythonthehardway.org/ - maybe I missed something.

Heh, not exactly: "A programmer may try to get you to install Python 3 and learn that. You should tell them, "When all of the python code on your computer is Python 3, then I'll try to learn it." That should keep them busy for about 10 years." http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/ex0.html (under Warnings for Beginners)

Is that actually good advice?

Re: Dive Into Python 3 (online book)

#25

Post by goblin89 »

fraXis wrote: post #7
MostAwesomeDude wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DiP3 is not a very good book. (Neither was DiP.) I don't know how relevant that is to sales, though, but considering that some of the bigger Python groups actively recommend against it, I wouldn't be surprised if there was an impact on sales from that alone. Edit: I don't recommend learning Python from a book. I recommend http://docs.python.org/tutorial/ if you know a programming language already, or http://learnpyth…

What Python book do you recommend for someone who wants to start learning the language? Thanks.

If you aren't new to programming at all, then I'd suggest Python Essential Reference.

Otherwise, I'm still recommending against learning Python the hard way. That might depend on a person, but I don't think typing some samples can make an interesting task, and AFAIKT doing things that are not interesting for you makes learning process a lot less efficient.

Judging from my experience, the best way to start learning the language is having some actual work done (e.g., building a site with Django). Correspondingly, books you'd need are references—Python's docs, Python Essential Reference. You can use LPTHW as a reference, too, just do something more useful than its samples.

Re: Dive Into Python 3 (online book)

#26

Post by wisty »

MostAwesomeDude wrote: post #5
kqr2 wrote: post #2

What's interesting is that according to the author Mark Pilgrim: Python 3 is a commercial disaster. In 2010Q3 I had negative sales of DiP3. More people returned it than bought it. I'm considering retro-fitting the book's content to Python 2.7 and re-releasing it as "Dive Into Python 2." Seriously. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/f545e/i_am_a_fourtime_...

DiP3 is not a very good book. (Neither was DiP.) I don't know how relevant that is to sales, though, but considering that some of the bigger Python groups actively recommend against it, I wouldn't be surprised if there was an impact on sales from that alone. Edit: I don't recommend learning Python from a book. I recommend http://docs.python.org/tutorial/ if you know a programming language already, or http://learnpyth…

This isn't really correct. Zed Shaw (and maybe some others) started a backlash against it, because DITP 2 was so heavily recommended.

It does have a couple of weaknesses. Starting with ODBC is kind of lame, and should be updated to Sqlite. And SOAP needs to be taken out the back and shot, but that's just my opinion.

I'm sure Learn Python The Hard Way is pretty good, but DITP was the second place most Pythoneers were sent to (after the tutorial you pointed out, of course).

Re: Dive Into Python 3 (online book)

#27

Post by ez77 »

Luyt wrote: post #20
frewsxcv wrote: post #8

I'm curious why people consider DiP to be a bad book? I personally can't defend it since I haven't read it

"This book is so full of bad initial examples and difficult to follow instructions that it actually hurts Python to have it exist. When beginners stumble onto it they end up getting discouraged and go on to another language. I personally have had too many friends who are eager to learn programming find this festering dung pile before I could warn them and get turned off from programming." - Zed Shaw

That is, at best, a very high-level 'why', and unnecessarily hostile.

Re: Dive Into Python 3 (online book)

#28

Post by enterneo »

Luyt wrote: post #20
frewsxcv wrote: post #8

I'm curious why people consider DiP to be a bad book? I personally can't defend it since I haven't read it

"This book is so full of bad initial examples and difficult to follow instructions that it actually hurts Python to have it exist. When beginners stumble onto it they end up getting discouraged and go on to another language. I personally have had too many friends who are eager to learn programming find this festering dung pile before I could warn them and get turned off from programming." - Zed Shaw

in fact to reiterate have a look at the awesome fibonacci example showing power of generators [1]:

    def fibonacci(max):
        a, b = 0, 1       
        while a
To run the function do:

    >>> for n in fibonacci(1000): 
    ...     print n,              
    0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610 987
[1] http://diveintopython.org/dynamic_functions/stage6.html

Re: Dive Into Python 3 (online book)

#29

Post by [deleted] »

enterneo wrote: post #23
Luyt wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This book is so full of bad initial examples and difficult to follow instructions that it actually hurts Python to have it exist. When beginners stumble onto it they end up getting discouraged and go on to another language. I personally have had too many friends who are eager to learn programming find this festering dung pile before I could warn them and get turned off from programming." - Zed Shaw

I do not agree. In fact, the insanely cool examples are what makes this book worth reading. This book is not for beginners but for programmers who have experience in some other language and are curious to know why python might be a better choice for them as their next high level language.

[deleted]

Re: Dive Into Python 3 (online book)

#30

Post by MostAwesomeDude »

wisty wrote: post #26
MostAwesomeDude wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DiP3 is not a very good book. (Neither was DiP.) I don't know how relevant that is to sales, though, but considering that some of the bigger Python groups actively recommend against it, I wouldn't be surprised if there was an impact on sales from that alone. Edit: I don't recommend learning Python from a book. I recommend http://docs.python.org/tutorial/ if you know a programming language already, or http://learnpyth…

This isn't really correct. Zed Shaw (and maybe some others) started a backlash against it, because DITP 2 was so heavily recommended. It does have a couple of weaknesses. Starting with ODBC is kind of lame, and should be updated to Sqlite. And SOAP needs to be taken out the back and shot, but that's just my opinion. I'm sure Learn Python The Hard Way is pretty good, but DITP was the second place most Pythoneers were…

#python has been unrecommending DiP since before Zed wrote LPTHW. The #python dead-tree recommendation, for a long time, was How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: http://greenteapress.com/thinkpython/

Lutz' Learning Python dead-tree is also pretty great, from what I hear, although I haven't had a chance to sit down with a copy yet.

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