Python in a Nutshell Review

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Book:		Python in a Nutshell
Subject:		Python in a Nutshell Review
Date:		2003-04-01 11:56:13
From:		Bernhard Straub

Rating: Being a ObjectiveC developer of yore, I had changed sides a long time ago to become a pure user and earn a living as a banker. After nearly ten years of abstinence I was recently introduced to Python by a student working at our office. Happy to recognize many of the concepts of ObjectiveC I decided to learn Python for pure fun. I found the online documentation not as helpful as proclaimed on python.org, but I got into Python with the help of 'Learning Python' by Mark Lutz and then got on with 'Programming Python' by Mark Lutz. What I was missing dearly, however, was a concise but comprehensive reference book. In 'Python in a Nutshell' I have found what I had been looking for and more. Aimed at Python programmers with some prior knowledge of Python, it is not exactly a starting point for beginners, but it is a truly excellent guide to programmers conversant with other programming languages. The book is well organized and clearly arranged with a good index. It offers all the syntactic and morphologic specifications required for application development, accompanied by well written code samples. The coverage of Tkinter is brief (I am still looking for a thorough coverage of that topic), but sufficient for a reference book. In short, I am happy with Alex Martelli's work - it is sitting next to my keyboard all the time !