Reddit Reddit reviews The Python 3 Standard Library by Example (Developer's Library)

We found 5 Reddit comments about The Python 3 Standard Library by Example (Developer's Library). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

Computers & Technology
Books
Programming Languages
Python Programming
The Python 3 Standard Library by Example (Developer's Library)
Check price on Amazon

5 Reddit comments about The Python 3 Standard Library by Example (Developer's Library):

u/fernly · 23 pointsr/learnpython

Not personally familiar with it, but a quick Amazon search shows that the same authors have written essentially the same book for different languages: Data Structures and Algorithms in Java, ...in C++, ...in Python. However it is confusing to do this search as there are several other books that use the same words, "Data Structures and Algorithms" but they are by other authors.

Using the "Look Inside" feature I note that in the intro, they say the Python version is improved over the others in several ways. Scrolling to the beginning of chapter 1 they say the book is based on "Python 3.1 and later". It is good that in 2013 they committed to Python 3, but it is now 6 years and 6 dot-versions behind the state of the art, including the async features and several others. It would be good if they'd rewrite it to use 3.8 and all its features.

Scrolling on I am not impressed with their pedagogy. They dump a lot on the student in the first few topics, bouncing between the assignment statement to class methods and mutability. So many concepts so fast, with no code to make them real or show their application. The student is going to be memorizing a whole list of terms and definitions without ever applying any of them. Jeez, they even introduce the frozenSet class before the dict, and still without a single executable example. Expressions and operator precedence, you meet every operator and reserved word in the language in what is called a "Python Primer" section. Lots of luck remembering all that, student, when you need it.

And on and on: you basically have to learn the entire language, functions, argument passing, the entire list of builtins, I/O operations, try/except/raise, comprehension syntax! -- and you have not written one line of code yet.

Based on this admittedly cursory review, I would not recommend this for either a class or for self-study. Since you've had a fair amount of experience, try Python 201 which gets into the use of the standard lib modules. Or Doug Hellman's Python 3 Standard Library by Example.

u/rzzzwilson · 6 pointsr/learnpython

The Python Module of the Week site gives a huge list of examples of using the many modules in the standard library. I sometimes find the official python doc a little too official and use PYMOTW as a quick introduction.

Edit: there's also a PYMOTW book, if that's your thing. Warning: skip the e-book format of the book as it has major formatting problems.

u/Highflyer108 · 1 pointr/learnpython

Well I found the book for €25 so I decided to go ahead and buy it. And that link is to the first edition btw, a second edition was released this June so I hope if there was any formatting issues with the non-kindle version, they're fixed now.

u/driscollis · 1 pointr/learnpython

You could use Doug Hellman's "The Python Standard Library by Example" (https://www.amazon.com/Python-Standard-Library-Example-Developers/dp/0134291050). It has a Python 3 version. I have a book called Python 101 (https://python101.pythonlibrary.org/), although it's not really a reference...you might find it helpful though.