From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.
Erratum: "We're return to this in a second" (We'll return...)
This was an impressive introduction to Python and quite the polar opposite of the confusing and unhelpful volume on Python which I reviewed earlier this month. This one did the job right and led into the topic with clear and simple terminology and examples. It explained everything as it went and offered lots of support and practice without overdoing it.
It's split into two sections. The first, by Griffel, in an admirable introduction that gets you up and running with Python. The second, by Guetta, is a workmanlike tour that takes you into real-world-inspired examples where you work business data sets and learn how to set them up, manipulate them, and employ them to extract the information you need. I was impressed by this book - by how simple and clear it was and by how well things are explained.
The only issues I ran into were those of a formatting nature which I seem to encounter quite often in Kindle-format ebooks. I did not encounter these with the PDF format version which I also checked out - it was just in Kindle. This is one reason I detest Amazon, because if your text isn't plain vanilla, their conversion process will turn it into kindling - hence the name of their format, no doubt!
The weird effects I saw in this version I have seen in other books too. It seemed like this effect, whatever it was, affected instances where the letter 'F' was combined with another letter - another 'F', or with an 'I', an 'L', or a 'T', or where a capital 'T' appeared with a lower-case 'H'. In the 'F' cases, that letter and its partner letter were omitted; sometimes a space appeared in their stead, other times the word just contracted like there were no missing letters. For example, 'overflow' would turn into 'overow', 'different' would become 'dierent', 'often' for some reason maintained a space and would read as 'o en', or sometimes 'oen'. 'Fifty-Five' would read as 'ty-ve' LOL!
Here are some examples: "A survey by Stack Overow found that almost percent of programmers are self-taught..." (that's Stack Overflow) "...even professional programmers constantly come across new topics and concepts that don't know but have to gure out how to learn." (That's 'they don't know' and 'figure out how') "Yet the average uent adult knows only twenty to thirty-ve thousand words." (That's fluent, and thirty-five) "...some of the Python data types (e.g., oats, integers, and strings)..." - yes, it was quite amusing reading about how much oats plays into the Python language. Of course, it's floats! "A lot of what you're learning when you rst learn a programming language..." (first) "...(think Microso Word..." (Microsoft - but insult them all you want, I'm not a fan!) "Note that the so ware we use..." (software) "...end. e front end..." (The front end)
Another problem is that sometimes numbers, written as numbers, were missing, so I'd read, "According to the Global Language Monitor, the English language currently has , ,. words. (Ever stop to think about what a . word is?" All the figures are missing, but the letters remain!
That aside, I consider this a worthy read and a great start for anyone wanting to get into python programming whether your ultimate aim is business use or not.
