Reddit Reddit reviews Python Essential Reference

We found 23 Reddit comments about Python Essential Reference. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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23 Reddit comments about Python Essential Reference:

u/hnyakwai · 8 pointsr/Python

Get the Python Essential Reference by David Beazley. I was in the same boat as you several years ago. I probably read 5-6 python books that were aimed at experienced developers, Dave's book is BY FAR the best that I found.

He just started working on the 5th edition, so the 4th edition is getting a little long in the tooth (python 3 was a new thing back then), but I can still whole-heartedly recommend it.

u/rzzzwilson · 5 pointsr/learnpython

If you're not a beginner, Dave Beazley's book is a great python reference. Also possibly good is Doug Hellmann's book which is derived from his excellent Python Module of the Week website. The kindle version of his book has bad formatting problems, but the print book may be OK.

u/phstoven · 3 pointsr/Python

Python Essential Reference is great. It has a medium level overview of almost all of the standard library, and has some great explanations of decorators, 'with' statements, generators/yields, functional programming, testing, network stuff, etc...

u/freyrs3 · 3 pointsr/Python

This is a good book: Python Essential Reference.

If you're looking for gift ideas for new programmer my advice is always one of the three things:

  • A good keyboard.
  • A good pair of headphones.
  • Good coffee and mugs.

    Those three things usually go over well with programmer-types.
u/automatedtester · 3 pointsr/Python
u/enteleform · 3 pointsr/Python

Work through Python Crash Course: A Hands-On, Project-Based Introduction to Programming if you like project-based learning & having relevant context-based examples, or read through Python Essential Reference if you're comfortable with learning raw concepts & want a solid overhead view of what's available to you.
 
Automate the Boring Stuff with Python is another good project-based option:

u/hjablome1976 · 3 pointsr/Austin

We have a meetup specifically for people learning Python...

The Austin Learn Python Meetup
http://www.meetup.com/austinpython/events/195493322/

We meet once a month, and are working our way through this book: http://www.amazon.com/Python-Essential-Reference-David-Beazley/dp/0672329786/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1411752072&sr=8-1&keywords=beazley+python

We started about 18 months ago, but rebooted back to the beginning a little over a month ago.

u/qspec02 · 2 pointsr/learnprogramming

This (Python Essential Reference by David Beazley) is easily my #1 Python book for just about everything.

I wish it had a few cheatsheets or some quick references, but aside from that, it covers the language pretty thoroughly.

u/ninety_hex · 2 pointsr/learnpython

The learning resources in the wiki have a section for experienced programmers new to python which may be useful. I came to python from C and found David Beazley's book useful. It has a compressed introduction to python before diving into the standard library, a bit like K&R.

u/1nvader · 2 pointsr/learnpython

I can strongly recommend Python Essential Reference (4th Edition). It covers both Python 2 and 3. Maybe it's not free, but i think it reads much better than the free books from the sidebar.
The only downside of the book is that it is not written for absolut programming beginners, you need to have programming experience in any other language.

u/name_censored_ · 2 pointsr/Python

>Is there any books you would recommend as a reference not a guide? I have a few bookmarks that have really helped but i'd love a hard copy on hand.

I personally cut my teeth on a borrowed copy of Python Essential Reference - it's basically just a rehash of the standard library (though it's fantastic to have a hard copy, and it sounds like what you want). You can also try this book by Alex Martelli - I have never read it, but Alex Martelli is practically a god in the Python world (as someone who read GoF's Design Patterns, I loved his Python design patterns talk). Reddit also raves about Learn Python The Hard Way, though I have never read it because I erm... "disagree" with how Zed Shaw tends to approach things (to put it mildly), and I think it's a guide as opposed to a reference.

>Oh, and i've been having difficulty using the built in help function and such, is there a guide on how to use it effectively? I seem to struggle finding examples of the code too and how to use the functions and what i believe are called attributes ( the sub functions, e.g. datetime.datetime()),

I assume that the inbuild help you're talking about is the code documentation? This documentation is intentionally brief, so it's not particularly useful as anything but a reminder. You can create your own simply creating a string after you open a function or class;

def foo(etc):
""" This is the documentation for foo().

Triple quoted so that it can safely run over multiple lines"""

blah


As for the terminology; you are correct that they're called attributes. There are two sorts of attributes - methods (functions) and properties (values). It can get very messy/fun when you use the @property decorator or toy with __getattr__/__getattribute__/__setattr__, but let's not go there (let's just say that Python can be no-holds-barred).

>but i came from PHP where the PHP manual is amazing for a novice/new coder.

Python's online docs are absolutely fantastic. They are a comprehensive reference of not only the builtins and standard library, but also the object model, features, a rather good tutorial, the C API reference, and even heavy stuff like metaprogramming. The only things it's really missing is the really hardcore stuff like __code__ and __mro__, and to be honest, that's probably a good thing.

>And what is the difference between import datetime and from datetime inport datetime. Does it just allow me to call the attribute as datetime() and not datetime.datetime()?

That's exactly correct.

Just to add another complication, you can also from datetime import datetime as tell_me_the_time_please, and then instead of datetime() you can use tell_me_the_time_please(). The reason this is useful is that sometimes things in modules are named too generically (maybe it's main() or something), so you can import part of the module as a different name.

u/AtomicWedgy · 2 pointsr/learnpython

If you're looking for an intro to programming in Python I would suggest Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python For a general language reference Python Essential Refernce For an introduciton to the included modules The Python Standard Library by example which includes a lot of simple code examples. The book Core Python Application Programming is a great subset of the above books with less over all coverage but greater detail in the example code. And last but not least, for advanced algorithm info Annotated Algorithms in Python

u/dreamriver · 1 pointr/learnprogramming
u/nwilliams36 · 1 pointr/learnprogramming

I found this book very useful moving from Java to Python David Beazley Python Essential Reference

u/ryankask · 1 pointr/programming

I recommend you jump on to the Python bandwagon and start learning Django. The main site is http://www.djangoproject.com/. It has nice documentation http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ but the code is also very helpful to read. I would wager that if you could learn Python quickly by reading the Django code and learning some of the more advanced topics (https://code.djangoproject.com). There are two very helpful Groups on Google: Django-users (http://groups.google.com/group/django-users) and Django-developers (http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers -- think of this as read-only).

You've said you've dabbled in Python so I assume you know the resources there but two of my favorite books are Python in a Nutshell (http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596001889) by Alex Martelli who is a genius and very involved with the online community. Despite the book's age, Mr. Martelli's experience with Python will quickly inform you of the nuances and pleasures of working with the language. Finally, I just picked up a copy (4th edition) of David Beazley's (http://www.amazon.com/Python-Essential-Reference-David-Beazley/dp/0672329786/ref=dp_cp_ob_b_title_1) Python Essential Reference. A lot of it overlaps the Martelli book but it is updated for the most recent Python versions 2.6/3.X. I would buy both books and jump in. Note that they are reference books but since you have programming experience, I find them to be excellent "jump in" tutorials and of course essential references when coding.

Finally, to get a feel for best practices, see Dive into Python by Mark Pilgrim -- another great Pythonista the Python community values as he is very smart and can communicate well to the readers (plus he likes open source and his universal feed parser is great! and the book is free) -- http://www.diveintopython.org .

Contact me by using http://www.ryankaskel.com/contact-me/ if you find yourself strapped of cash and I would be happy to help you become a Pythonista.

u/bonekeeper · 1 pointr/Python

Also coming from PHP here, I got the "Python Essential Reference" from David Beazley and I must say that I like it very much. It's not a introductory book on programming - it assumed that you know programming very well and just need to learn the ins and outs of python. It's pretty direct-to-the-point and well written. I highly recommend it. http://www.amazon.com/Python-Essential-Reference-David-Beazley/dp/0672329786/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261867689&sr=8-1

u/ry4n831 · 1 pointr/Python

What initially caught my attention was the example used throughout the course (a stock portfolio). Using the example below, he walks through different scenarios while increasing the difficulty (goes from scripts, functions, classes including Inheritance, Encapsulation, iterators and Generators, Coroutines, etc), and explains everything along the way.

For example, he’s like what If this was a csv file and I wanted to read it? What if I wanted to create data quality checks? What if I wanted to create a class to handle reading this file? What if I wanted to create a class to output the portfolio in html? Csv file? So on, and so on.
Even though I didn't really understand anything past classes (until I watched the video like 10 times), I was reassured by who was presenting (Beazley seems to be kind of a rockstar in Python community) and ultimately decided that what he was talking about was worth knowing.

https://www.amazon.com/Python-Essential-Reference-David-Beazley/dp/0672329786



example used in course:

name, date, shares, price

AA,2007-06-11,100,32.20

IBM,2007-05-13,50,91.10

CAT,2006-09-23,150,83.44

MSFT,2007-05-17,200,51.23

GE,2006-02-01,95,40.37

MSFT,2006-10-31,50,65.10

IBM,2006-07-09,100,70.44

u/Greydmiyu · 1 pointr/programming

> It's never been compulsory unless you're bad at programming.

Or, back then, part of the policy of the shop at hand that use strict be used or be written up. So yeah, still compulsory.

> The only particularly Perl-ish one is the statement if condition.

Yup, that's the one. That was the moment I decided to leave Perl since it was clear that the language was not designed with maintenance in mind.

First up is the unless statement, it's shorthand for if !. Except we don't have an elsunless like elsif. So subsequent statements in the chain which are also not statements still have the if ! notation. So to be consistent when we have to add on additional if ! it is best to rewrite the first into a if ! from unless.

The statement if condition usage has no else or elsif at all. So if later we need to have chaining conditions we need to rewrite that portion into the standard if condition format.

Why does this matter?

Because to make my code maintainable just to myself all those years ago I made the decision to not use the unless or condition if forms and limit myself to to the if condition format. This way when I came back to the code months later to add in some new requirement from on high I knew exactly what I was getting into.

The problem is, I wasn't the only Perl hacker in the shop. So every damn time I had to touch someone else's code or they touched mine it felt more like a rewrite than a simple modification.

That frustration came to a head when I went to the O'Reilly conference in Monterey back in... 2000? Instead of focusing on Perl presentations I hit up a Python presentation put on by Beazley himself. Python's focus on one clear way to achieve something was so refreshing compared to tossing out 75% of Perl's TIMTOWDI mish-mash.

> If you're going to bitch about having lots of different ways to accomplish a task (despite the Perl mantra, TIMTOWDI..), pick "iterate a list" or the ridiculous number of ways for can be used.

This is true. I, however, choose if as an example because it is easy to explain, even to laypeople, as to why I ran screaming from the Perl world back then.

(Edits for late night typos).

u/davebrk · 1 pointr/Python

> so the book that is a reference on 2.6 and 3 at the same time is a lot more useful!

Try Python Essential Reference (4th Edition).

u/Probono_Bonobo · 1 pointr/Python

Novice here. I bought the Python Essential Reference at the advice of this thread when I ran into some frustrations with O'Reilly (Learning Python, 4th Ed). They both have their issues. Essential reference is written for a higher-level audience, but I think it does a better job illustrating concepts by example. By contrast, the O'Reilly is more oriented toward beginners, but it's weirdly averse to including actual code snippets, so you get very little immersion in the syntax. Also the organization of the contents is extremely arbitrary, such that if you read it in a straight line you'll encounter an example of a nested dictionary prior to learning basic dictionary operations, and list comprehensions before lists. Steer clear.

u/SirToxe · 1 pointr/learnprogramming

I am not sure which books are recommended nowadays but for me years ago it was: https://www.amazon.com/Python-Essential-Reference-David-Beazley/dp/0672329786/

But this one is mostly about Python2, though a new edition might be on its way.