Python – Geek Book

Python Essential Reference 4th Ed.

Posted on 23 December, 2009 by bookGeek

It has been ten years since David Beazley wrote the first edition of Python Essential Reference. The book has proven itself as a valuable resource to Python developers and has been kept current over those ten years, with the fourth edition coming at an interesting time for Python. Python 3 was a major release that broke backwards compatibility. Python 3 has been around for a year now. That said, the current download page at the official Python site states, “If you don’t know which version to use, start with Python 2.6.4; more existing third party software is compatible with Python 2 than Python 3 right now.” Beazley in keeping with the pragmatic roots of a reference that sticks to what is ‘essential’ has removed the coverage on features from 2 that were removed from 3. At the same time, the primary focus for new features that came with 3 is limited to those that have been back-ported to 2. This approach, born out of a desire to keep the reference relevant, provides a blended approach that is above all else practical.

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Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python

Posted on 27 October, 2009 by bookGeek

The Second Edition of Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python is available to read on-line or as a free download. This is a book that aims to teach children to use Python. The author says that it is appropriate for kids from 10 years old, on up.

I haven’t read through it all. I gave the PDF version a cursory glance and it looks good. The table of contents doesn’t give page numbers and there are some other rough edges, but at no cost, this is acceptable in my mind.

I do intend to read it and see how it compares to “Hello World!”.

Edit: It looks like there have been some changes over at the site and so I’ve updated the post to reflect the title and show the cover of the book.

Hello World!

Posted on 2 July, 2009 by bookGeek

Hitting middle age has been an interesting time. I catch myself thinking about how well kids have it today and sounding a lot like my father. One difference is while my dad was happy to teach me about sports or cars, we never spent any time knocking out code together. I think he did realize that home computers were important and I will always be grateful for the Commodore Vic-20 be brought home one day. It was a substantial purchase for our household. I spent many days copying lines of basic from magazines and saving the results to cassette tapes. In my home today we have a considerably better situation, computing wise. There are usually a couple laptops running as well as the desktop machine upstairs. My kids take for granted what I found to be amazing and new. Still, that’s all pretty normal and I’d like to give them an opportunity to go deeper if they are so inclined, just like we give them opportunities to explore other skills and pursuits. With that in mind I brought a copy of Hello World! home a few weeks ago, and the response from my oldest has been surprisingly enthusiastic.

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