Paperback, 300 pages
English language
Published Dec. 30, 2012 by O’Reilly Media.
If you want to learn how to program, working with Python is an excellent way to start. This hands-on guide takes you through the language one step at a time, beginning with basic programming concepts before moving on to functions, recursion, data structures, and object-oriented design. Through exercises in each chapter, you’ll try out programming concepts as you learn them. Think Python is ideal for students at the high school or college level, as well as self-learners, home-schooled students, and professionals who need to learn programming basics.
I liked it a lot.
And... I really respect his decision to make it free for everyone.
Eternally grateful
I do a lot of statistics, but I use mostly frequentist techniques - Bayesian techniques usually seem to me like more trouble than they are worth, so I wanted to read the author's "Think Bayes", also published in paperback by O'Reilly, but all the code in it is Python. So I got this first. I have been coding since 1971, and at this late stage, most programming languages bore me - I'm almost always more interested in the interface, and I have used Hypercard and Realbasic (now Xojo) for that reason. Anyway, this book is pretty good. My only complaint is that it doesn't actually tell you the nitty-gritty of getting started in Python - that it comes with the Mac operating system (but isn't version 3), and that you can use IDLE, and how other IDE's work etc. Fortunately, in modern times, if you just go to the Python …
I do a lot of statistics, but I use mostly frequentist techniques - Bayesian techniques usually seem to me like more trouble than they are worth, so I wanted to read the author's "Think Bayes", also published in paperback by O'Reilly, but all the code in it is Python. So I got this first. I have been coding since 1971, and at this late stage, most programming languages bore me - I'm almost always more interested in the interface, and I have used Hypercard and Realbasic (now Xojo) for that reason. Anyway, this book is pretty good. My only complaint is that it doesn't actually tell you the nitty-gritty of getting started in Python - that it comes with the Mac operating system (but isn't version 3), and that you can use IDLE, and how other IDE's work etc. Fortunately, in modern times, if you just go to the Python web site, or better, to YouTube, you can find a lot of very good instructional material and fill in the blanks.
