language and being an O'Reilly "Nutshell Series" enthusiast

for many years, owning 40+ 'animal' books, this was actually

the first one I was not quite happy with.

I felt that the concept of "looking the expert over the

shoulder" was taken too far. Picking up a new language is

mostly a time-restricted process for me, and I have entirely

given up on reading books linearly from cover to cover. I

mostly skim over pages to get to the information I need,

in order to get the current job done. Skipping the things I already

know and getting quickly to the point I need to learn next

is the main requirement.

As a consequence, I need such a book to have reference

qualities, which means basically to have all information

for any give language concept in one place, not spread over

many chapters. Having reference material in the appendices

is a nice attempt to compensate, but turns out to be

insufficient.

For the first time I was happy to have a german alternative

("Das Python-Buch"). It provides the

reference qualities I need, although it lacks the humorous

and delightful style of Mark Lutz' writing. Yes, being

systematically is not always as cheerful reading, but turns

out to be what it needs on a programmer's desktop: usable.