Opinions about this new Python book?

K

kyosohma

I'd appreciate opinions about this new Python book.

Title: Python Power!: The Comprehensive Guide
Author: Matt Telles
Publisher: Course Technology
Pub. Date: Jul 27, 2007
Edition: 1st edition
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 508
ISBN: 1598631586
List Price: 34.99 USD

The book on the publisher's website: <http://tinyurl.com/2dkhzg>

And at BestBookDeal.com:
<http://www.bestbookdeal.com/book/compare/1598631586>

Thanks,

Dick Moores

I just got this book over the weekend. I'll start reading/skimming
through it this week and hopefully remember to get back to you. By the
way, why do you want to know?

Mike
 
D

Dick Moores

At said:
I just got this book over the weekend. I'll start reading/skimming
through it this week and hopefully remember to get back to you.
Thanks!

By the
way, why do you want to know?

If the experts like it, I'll buy it.

Dick
 
S

Shawn Milochik

Yes, please post back to the list. I saw this book on Amazon, but
there's no table of contents listed, nor is there one on the
publisher's site.

Thanks,
Shawn
 
K

kyosohma

Yes, please post back to the list. I saw this book on Amazon, but
there's no table of contents listed, nor is there one on the
publisher's site.

Thanks,
Shawn

Here's an abbreviated Table of Contents...just chapter titles. The
book's table of contents also lists section headers.

Chapter 1: About Python
Chapter 2: Python Language Overview
Chapter 3: Tools
Chapter 4: Data Types
Chapter 5: Control Flow
Chapter 6: Input & Output
Chapter 7: Functions & Modules
Chapter 8: Exception Handling
Chapter 9: Object-Oriented Programming
Chapter 10: Classes and Objects in Python
Chapter 11: The Python Library
Chapter 12: The GUI - Tkinter
Chapter 13: The Web Server - Apache
Chapter 14: Working with Databases
Chapter 15: Putting It All Together
Chapter 16: Python and Graphics


Mike
 
K

kyosohma

Here's an abbreviated Table of Contents...just chapter titles. The
book's table of contents also lists section headers.

Chapter 1: About Python
Chapter 2: Python Language Overview
Chapter 3: Tools
Chapter 4: Data Types
Chapter 5: Control Flow
Chapter 6: Input & Output
Chapter 7: Functions & Modules
Chapter 8: Exception Handling
Chapter 9: Object-Oriented Programming
Chapter 10: Classes and Objects in Python
Chapter 11: The Python Library
Chapter 12: The GUI - Tkinter
Chapter 13: The Web Server - Apache
Chapter 14: Working with Databases
Chapter 15: Putting It All Together
Chapter 16: Python and Graphics

Mike

More on the subject...the writer is very conversational in tone and it
makes for a light read in the first 1 1/2 chapters that I've
completed. I've noticed a couple of sentence errors, but nothing in
the code.

He disses lambdas, which I haven't used for anything either. But I
have seen good uses for them (particularly in Tkinter callbacks),
although they don't seem to be as readable or usable as the rest of
Python. For some reason, the author makes the claim that the term
"Predicate" is "bandied about quite a bit in the literature" of
Python. I have 17 or so Python books and I don't think I've ever seen
this used in conjunction with Python...or in any of the docs I've
skimmed. What the!?

I'll keep you'all posted.

Mike
 
N

Neil Cerutti

For some reason, the author makes the claim that the term
"Predicate" is "bandied about quite a bit in the literature" of
Python. I have 17 or so Python books and I don't think I've
ever seen this used in conjunction with Python...or in any of
the docs I've skimmed. What the!?

The document searching facility reveals that the term is bandied
about in five places in the standard documentation. These uses
seem approriate and uncontroversial to me.

These document functions accepting predicates as aruments:

6.5.1 Itertools functions
6.5.3 Recipes
11.47 Creating a new Distutils command
26.10.1 Types and members

The following provides a few predicate functions (weird! I'd have
never thought to look there for, e.g., ismodule):

6.7 operator -- Standard operators as functions
 
A

Alex Martelli

Neil Cerutti said:
The document searching facility reveals that the term is bandied
about in five places in the standard documentation. These uses
seem approriate and uncontroversial to me.

These document functions accepting predicates as aruments:

6.5.1 Itertools functions
6.5.3 Recipes
11.47 Creating a new Distutils command
26.10.1 Types and members

The following provides a few predicate functions (weird! I'd have
never thought to look there for, e.g., ismodule):

6.7 operator -- Standard operators as functions

Module inspect also provides useful predicates (though I don't remember
if its docs CALL them predicates;-).


Alex
 
D

Dennis Lee Bieber

More on the subject...the writer is very conversational in tone and it
makes for a light read in the first 1 1/2 chapters that I've
completed. I've noticed a couple of sentence errors, but nothing in
the code.

Hopefully it isn't quite as annoying as some of what I've found in
the Turbogears book that recently arrived from Amazon. (Rapid Web
Applications with TurboGears)

I've so far found a couple of pages where editing rewrites of
paragraphs left redundancies. Example -- section 4.3:

second paragraph

"""
.... We set up some variables, and then create a new /Bookmark/ object
with the exact same syntax we used earlier in the chapter when we
created our first bookmark through /tg-admin shell/.
"""

sentence/sample code/next paragraph

"""
This method sets up a few variables, and then creates a new /Bookmark/
object using the exact same syntax we used earlier in the chapter when
we created out first bookmark through /tg-admin shell/. ...
"""

That's the most blatant, so far, but I've found a few other examples
where a paragraph below a code sample basically restates the paragraph
above it; and the paragraph above seems confusing because it reads as if
it is commenting on prior material, not following material.

It's as if the book had been first written using, say, "describe, show
code", then edited by someone favoring "show code, explain" style... And
the two versions were then merged by a third person... Hmmm, there are
three authors...

--
Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber KD6MOG
(e-mail address removed) (e-mail address removed)
HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/
(Bestiaria Support Staff: (e-mail address removed))
HTTP://www.bestiaria.com/
 
K

kyosohma

Hopefully it isn't quite as annoying as some of what I've found in
the Turbogears book that recently arrived from Amazon. (Rapid Web
Applications with TurboGears)

I've so far found a couple of pages where editing rewrites of
paragraphs left redundancies. Example -- section 4.3:

second paragraph

"""
... We set up some variables, and then create a new /Bookmark/ object
with the exact same syntax we used earlier in the chapter when we
created our first bookmark through /tg-admin shell/.
"""

sentence/sample code/next paragraph

"""
This method sets up a few variables, and then creates a new /Bookmark/
object using the exact same syntax we used earlier in the chapter when
we created out first bookmark through /tg-admin shell/. ...
"""

That's the most blatant, so far, but I've found a few other examples
where a paragraph below a code sample basically restates the paragraph
above it; and the paragraph above seems confusing because it reads as if
it is commenting on prior material, not following material.

It's as if the book had been first written using, say, "describe, show
code", then edited by someone favoring "show code, explain" style... And
the two versions were then merged by a third person... Hmmm, there are
three authors...

--
Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber KD6MOG
(e-mail address removed) (e-mail address removed)
HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/
(Bestiaria Support Staff: (e-mail address removed))
HTTP://www.bestiaria.com/

I have this book, but I haven't read it. However, I think the user
reviews on Amazon complained quite a bit about the TurboGears book's
writing and how it was pretty lousy. Even the code was broken. I look
forward to seeing just how truly awful it is.

As for this book, "Python Power!", I haven't noticed anything like
what you describe. An example issue I've noticed is stuff like this
sentence:

"There are a few catches and caveats work mentioning, however"

Obviously, "work" should be "worth". There are instances like that
where a real editor should have caught it, but a Word Processor
wouldn't.

Mike
 
P

Paul Boddie

Hopefully it isn't quite as annoying as some of what I've found in
the Turbogears book that recently arrived from Amazon. (Rapid Web
Applications with TurboGears)

Is this the book that came out before TurboGears even reached 1.0,
probably having diminished relevance now that there are 1.1 and 2.0
releases being worked on? I'm very much in favour of book
availability, and I pity the people writing Python books given
continuous changes to the language and the associated recommended
development practices as new features go in, but tracking a target
prior to any kind of stable release seems a bit too ambitious,
especially for a book in print.

Paul
 
C

Carsten Haese

[...] I pity the people writing Python books given
continuous changes to the language and the associated recommended
development practices as new features go in, but tracking a target
prior to any kind of stable release seems a bit too ambitious,
especially for a book in print.

The book was co-authored by Kevin Dangoor, who is the principal
developer of TurboGears. He probably had a pretty good idea of what the
stable release was going to look like.
 
D

Dennis Lee Bieber

Is this the book that came out before TurboGears even reached 1.0,
probably having diminished relevance now that there are 1.1 and 2.0

Not sure -- I'd ordered it in January, but Amazon didn't ship it
until a week ago; don't know if it was this, or the other book in the
shipment that held it up.
--
Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber KD6MOG
(e-mail address removed) (e-mail address removed)
HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/
(Bestiaria Support Staff: (e-mail address removed))
HTTP://www.bestiaria.com/
 
S

Steve Holden

Dennis said:
Not sure -- I'd ordered it in January, but Amazon didn't ship it
until a week ago; don't know if it was this, or the other book in the
shipment that held it up.

JANUARY!?????? So much for Amazon's customer service. Or is it only
February where you live?

regards
Steve
--
Steve Holden +1 571 484 6266 +1 800 494 3119
Holden Web LLC/Ltd http://www.holdenweb.com
Skype: holdenweb http://del.icio.us/steve.holden
--------------- Asciimercial ------------------
Get on the web: Blog, lens and tag the Internet
Many services currently offer free registration
----------- Thank You for Reading -------------
 
D

Dennis Lee Bieber

JANUARY!?????? So much for Amazon's customer service. Or is it only
February where you live?
No... It's Amazon's tendency to group shipments with multiple items
-- especially if you set "SuperSaver" (free shipping)... They then tend
to hold things until the last item in the set is released.

I've got orders in place for books that won't be released until next
spring...

Tis so bad, I have a VisualCE database/form on my PDA to track the
pre-orders so I don't accidentally buy a book in a local store...
--
Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber KD6MOG
(e-mail address removed) (e-mail address removed)
HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/
(Bestiaria Support Staff: (e-mail address removed))
HTTP://www.bestiaria.com/
 
K

kyosohma

JANUARY!?????? So much for Amazon's customer service. Or is it only
February where you live?

regards
Steve
--
Steve Holden +1 571 484 6266 +1 800 494 3119
Holden Web LLC/Ltd http://www.holdenweb.com
Skype: holdenweb http://del.icio.us/steve.holden
--------------- Asciimercial ------------------
Get on the web: Blog, lens and tag the Internet
Many services currently offer free registration
----------- Thank You for Reading -------------

Yeah...The Python Power! book was supposed to be released months ago,
so I ordered it 4-6 months ago, but it only shipped a week ago when it
actually released. Admittedly, this has nothing to do with the
TurboGears book.

Mike
 

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