Dive Into Python 3 (pdf) by Mark Pilgrim is a good choice for those who are already programmers – know a thing or two about Python. Written in an absolutely engaging manner, this hands-on guide to Python 3 jumps directly into Python and its core: data types, unit testing, generator, and interacting with the web.
Software developer and writer Mark Pilgrim, is a well renowned developer advocate for open source and open standards. He has authored blogs and several books including a guide to the Python programming language, Dive Into Python, and Dive Into Python 3.
The pdf version of Dive Into Python 3 – 2nd edition, is available here for free download. You can also buy the book from Amazon following the referral link.
Buy from Amazon: Dive Into Python 3
Book Review:
- Title: Dive Into Python 3
- Author: Mark Pilgrim
- Edition: 2nd
- Publisher: Apress
- Pages: 495
- Format: pdf
- Size: 2.6MB
Whether you’re an experienced programmer in any language who’s looking to get into Python or you’re a confused Python programmer, Dive Into Python 3 is the book you’re looking for if you want to dive straight into Python’s data types, generators, unit testing, interacting with the web, and many more.
Just like the original book Dive Into Python, this book has an absolutely brilliant writing style and is strongly example based. Each chapter starts with a complete and real code example, they are then broken down into pieces and thoroughly explained, and everything is put back all together in a summary at the end.
Dive Into Python 3 includes:
- Example programs with complete code – completely rewritten compared to the original Dive Into Python.
- Strongly example based
- Clear and meaningful illustration of powerful and new concepts now available in Python 3: sets, generators, closures, iterators, comprehensions, etc.
- Emphasis on best practices such as unit testing
- Covers some external libraries such as httplib2
- Case study that details into porting a major library from Python 2 to Python 3
- A comprehensive appendix containing all the syntactic and semantic changes in Python 3.
The book features a total of 20 chapters, starting from What’s New In “Dive Into Python 3” to Where To Go From Here and Troubleshooting. Earlier chapters cover topics such as Installing Python, Your First Python Program, Native Datatypes, Comprehensions, Strings, Regular Expressions, Closures & Generators, and Class & Iterators.
It then jumps into topics such as Advanced Iterators, Unit Testing, Refactoring, Files, XML, Serializing Python Objects and HTTP Web Services. The latter chapters present various things: Case Study: Porting charted to Python 3, Packaging Python Libraries, Porting Code to Python 3 with 2to3 and Special Method Names.
Besides the content information, Mark does a great job overall in a sense that the text is complete. The chapter build on each other very well and earlier chapter form the basics for next chapter and some advanced concepts.
Whether you’re an experienced programmer looking to get into Python or grizzled Python veteran who remembers the days when you had to import the string module, “Dive Into Python” is your ‘desert island’ Python book.
— Joey deVilla, Slashdot contributor
Buy from Amazon: Dive Into Python 3
Mark Pilgrim’s Dive Into Python 3 (pdf) is a perfect resource for veteran programmers in Python or any other programming language, but those who are new to the language shouldn’t take it as “my first programming book”. You’ll enjoy this book especially if you’re looking forward to jumping into the language fast and get going right away.
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