5 Responses for "Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner, 3rd Edition"

1. Ronald W. Knights March 10th, 2010 at 5:08 am 1

   I think there were some errors in this book. I do know it was rather distressing in a way.

   The book is full of lessons, and I always wondered exactly where they were going with them. . what were they going to accomplish? Everything seems so unfinished in the book.

   I recall a lot of emphasis on games. . . I don’t care about games.

   I have a Macintosh computer, and use Poser. I am distressed because some Poser-related utilities don’t come in Macintosh versions. I thought I’d try to learn Python and write some of my own.

   I gave up after less than 100 pages. I think these people are so caught up in their own knowledge that they forget to see things through the eyes of rank beginners who are desperate to learn programming.

   This book joins a collection of other books that are truly disappointing.
   Rating: 2 / 5

2. D. Seto March 10th, 2010 at 7:44 am 2

   Major knock on this book are the exercises. Some of the exercises were ridiculously hard, had to search on the internet to resolve some of them since the chapters themselves gave very basic information on how to solve some of those problems.
   Rating: 2 / 5

3. Dr. Lee D. Carlson March 10th, 2010 at 9:37 am 3

   Python has become very popular recently, as a perusal of the list servers on the various programming languages attests to. The author of this book points to its widespread use in game programming, and a perusal of the contents of the book will reveal the influence of Python in this area. This reviewer has used Python in the context of Web application modeling, where it’s conciseness and ease of use made it very helpful. This book was helpful in the actual learning of Python in order to carry out this effort, but this reviewer cannot speak to its power in game programming since he has never used it in that context. The book therefore was not read in its entirety, but only parts deemed useful for learning Python in order to carry out useful tasks. The book is advertised as one that is directed to readers who are `absolute beginners’, so some of the contents will seem very elementary to those readers with programming experience. Readers who might be thinking of learning Python but want evidence of its success can go to the Python. org site to find examples of its application. This reviewer does not know of any cases where Python has been used for heavy-duty number crunching, but it looks as though this is in the realm of possibility.

   When learning Python one will observe a certain simplicity in its syntax, and for those readers/programmers who despise creating user-defined interfaces from scratch, Python come with its own GUI, which is called IDLE (IDE on a Mac platform). Python is touted as being object-oriented, and is compared in this regard with C# and Java in the book. However, these languages are not truly object-oriented, given the existence of primitive types in them. The author though points out that contrary to these languages, the use of Python as an object-oriented language is optional, to be used only for large projects where object-oriented programming really has its power.

   The scoping rules in Python are typical for a language that is globally scoped. The variables inside function definitions are local to the function, i. e. are in its `namespace’ and cannot be accessed from any other namespace. This allows variables with the same name to be used in different functions. But even though you cannot access variables in a local namespace if you are in a global namespace, you can change global variables from inside functions, as the author illustrates with an explicit example. In addition, one can give a variable inside a function the same name as a global variable and `shadow’ the global variable. This allows one to change the value of a global variable inside a namespace for processing purposes, but the original value is unchanged in the global namespace. The author correctly warns against the use of global variables, due to the possibilities of side effects. Global constants however are encouraged.

   Rating: 4 / 5

4. J. Frantz March 10th, 2010 at 11:58 am 4

   I liked the book for what it is, a beginners book as it is very elementry and a good way to learn from not knowing anything.
   Rating: 3 / 5

5. Matthew Hartman March 10th, 2010 at 1:35 pm 5

   This book is definatley worth the price (18 bucks) however, if you want to get a solid foundation in Python, I would suggest skipping over this book entirely and reading; “Learning Python” by Mark Lutz and David Ascher published by: Oreilly.

   This book assumes that the reader has absolutely no knowledge of computer programming just as they claim. It was a little too basic for my taste and I am going to assume that it is too basic even for a lot of beginning programmers. I am giving it 3 stars because I believe that any novice programmer will comfortably pick up the fundamentals of Python programming from this book. On the same note, I’m giving it only 3 stars because this book has some very hard competition such as the book that I mention earlier in this review. If you truly believe that you will learn the fundamentals of Python programming a lot better by developing rudamentary video games and you don’t mind redundant elementary step by step basic instructions than this book is definetly for you. However, if you want to get a good solid foundation in Python programming from a book that does not assume you are a 6th grade bedroom junkie, than maybe you should look elsewhere (as in the Oreilly book mentioned earlier).
   I did not find any editing errors in this book and it seems to be organized quite well.
   Rating: 3 / 5