The author makes a lot of, frankly, stupid decisions. As far as Python, your first language is concerned, it is an excellent choice. The Python 3 edition of my book now includes 12 hours of video instruction. You bring the discipline, commitment, and persistence; the author supplies everything else. This book as been a labor of love almost entirely from me with help from key people along the way, but otherwise a one man show. A miswording on my part. There cannot be a function that replaces it. Be careful in remembering things, the only stutter you are going to face.
If you're a seller, Fulfillment by Amazon can help you increase your sales. Zed Shaw has perfected the world's best system for learning Python. Follow it and you will succeed-just like the hundreds of thousands of beginners Zed has taught to date. You bring the discipline, commitment, and persistence; the author supplies everything else. In Learn Python the Hard Way, Third Edition, you'll learn Python by working through 52 brilliantly crafted exercises. As you do, you'll learn how software works; what good programs look like; how to read, write, and think about code; and how to find and fix your mistakes using tricks professional programmers use. But soon, you'll just get it-and that will feel great. This tutorial will reward you for every minute you put into it. Soon, you'll know one of the world's most powerful, popular programming languages. You'll be a Python programmer. Any level of Python experience none to fluent New to data analysis. Also includes access to 12 hours of video files. Takes you by the hand and teaching by examples that are explained line by line. There is heavy emphasis on examples that are fun and useful, including games, graphics, database applications, file storage, puzzles, and more. You will learn how to think 'Pythonically' and avoid common 'gotchas'. Each chapter will tell you a bit more about programming. Introduces key concepts through simple but practical examples, incrementally building on them to solve more difficult, real-world problems. Rather, you are sent adrift and told to find your way. As everyone knows the quality of advice across the web is hit or miss and some programming symbols are hard to find. I agree that the exercise of trying to find these things is useful but I paid for the book and I want to have the answer key. The repeated calls to make flashcards makes sense but not if he fails to provide the information that belongs on the cards. While the lack of detailed tables for key features is horrid, the information provided is superb and there are very few typos. I especially appreciated the introduction to Windows PowerShell and Mac Terminal which, unlike the rest of the book, does include the definitions for essentially everything covered. So, while the positives well thought through progressively more difficult code examples do outweigh the negatives lack of a glossary and lack of tables with details. This book provides a good path for beginners to explore python programming. The problem with this book is that the author leaves out too much stuff for the readers to find out themselves. Reading this book reminds me of college classes where professors lecture you the bare basics and expect you to do after class studying to fill up the holes. The reason I buy books like this is so i don't have to google everything. This book is great and I would give it 5 stars for the book itselfbut it's definitely outdated. There are a lot of differences, which I didn't realize before I was learning the language, and ended up having to buy the Python 3 book because the code wouldn't work for me as it's written here. This book just makes you type out the code and jump into programming right away. Program first and learn later, I find this to be ineffective because you are just mindlessly programming without learning the definitions of strings, lists, tuples, dictionaries, and how they work. I feel like with this book, you type code first and figure out concepts later. This book misses out on a lot of stuff. For example: The book has functions lesson but, it misses out on structure functions, and the purpose of functions, and doesn't even mention def main. It just like code academy, just programming but not learning the concepts. You should read and know the definitions of those concepts first, look at sample programs, and then type out code, and then do exercises. I found a much better and effective textbook: Starting Out with Python by Tony Gaddis. This is a good tool but with a number of flaws. Example: The author demands that you type exactly what he has written. So although the book has lots of good guidance it must rely heavily on internet searches to get the code right. I also strongly recommend the hard copy over the kindle version. If I had it to do over I would only purchase the hard copy. The author intentionally re-invents what are learn python 3 the hard way industry standard terms with his own nomenclature which is no more simple than just using the accepted terms. I worked through all the examples in the book. In this respect, it got me going with Python. But learn python 3 the hard way, his writing style got in the way, for me, and I quickly moved on to the Python Essential Reference and on-line forums. I don't know to whom the book is for I only know that it learn python 3 the hard way not for beginners.
