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A wood rat adorns the cover of Learning Python and it looks slightly scared, I think the tagline may cause that fear. "Object-Oriented Programming" it certainly scared me. Thankfully 'Learning Python' starts off gently with the first few chapters introducing the language and telling you why it is a great language to use and listing many examples of its use.
Sections two and three cover the basic objects, syntax and loops. Coming to Python as a Perl hacker I found the syntax a bit strange at first but you soon settle into it. It was nice to see documentation presented early, showing you how to use Python's features to document your code and how to use that documentation from inside an interactive session.
Functions and modules are well covered any by the time you finish those sections you can be writing very functional Python scripts. However the main meat of the book was the section on object oriented programming (OOP). It started off with a general introduction to what OOP is and moved slowly into how it is implemented. I was glad to see that it built on the functions and modules previously covered, and really wasn't as scary as I expected.
The final sections covered one of my favourite parts of Python, it's exception handling. This was well presented and the way that Python lets you deal with exceptions almost makes me want to use it in all my day to day scripts. It finishes off with some good examples of common tasks, showing you built-in functions and small code snippets to perform those tasks. Also included is a good look at Python resources, covering; frameworks, IDEs and sources of community information.
Overall I found the book to be an easy going read and each of the eight parts finishes up with a good selection of excercises on the topics just covered. There are solutions and small discussions on these exercises in appendix B.
My only concern about this version of the book would be it's age, this is the second edition and was published in December 2003. While it covers version 2.3 it mentions that this was the upcoming release. As the current version is 2.5.1 I worried that some new important features may be missed out, however I can see that the third edition is just about to be released which I'm sure would address these worries. There is also a large list of errata, mostly typos, but there are a few mistakes in the code examples.
Summary
I found this book a great introduction to Python and would reccomend it to anyone looking to learn the language. An updated copy that covers the latest versions of Python would be good but I can see this is on the horizon.
Table of contents
Learning Python, 2nd Edition
Ch 1. A Python Q&A Session
Ch 2. How Python Runs Programs
Ch 3. How You Run Programs
Ch 4. Numbers
Ch 5. Strings
Ch 6. Lists and Dictionaries
Ch 7. Tuples, Files, and Everything Else
Ch 8. Assignment, Expressions, and Print
Ch 9. if Tests
Ch 10. while and for Loops
Ch 11. Documenting Python Code
Ch 12. Function Basics
Ch 13. Scopes and Arguments
Ch 14. Advanced Function Topics
Ch 15. Modules: The Big Picture
Ch 16. Module Coding Basics
Ch 17. Module Packages
Ch 18. Advanced Module Topics
Ch 19. OOP: The Big Picture
Ch 20. Class Coding Basics
Ch 21. Class Coding Details
Ch 22. Designing With Classes
Ch 23. Advanced Class Topics
Ch 24. Exception Basics
Ch 25. Exception Objects
Ch 26. Designing with Exceptions
Ch 27. Common Tasks in Python
Ch 28. Frameworks
Ch 29. Python Resources
App A. Installation and Configuration
App B. Solutions and Exercises
Index
