Building Skills in Python [Version 2.5]

About the Python Book

How do you learn Python? By doing a series of exercises, each of which adds a single new feature of the language. This 450+ page book has 42 chapters that will help you build Python programming skills through a series of exercises. This book includes six projects from straight-forward to sophisticated that will help solidify your Python skills.

The 2.5 edition was significantly revised and expanded to cover Python 2.5. Many chapters have been updated from the 2.4 edition, and a number of chapters added. This was updated 4/8/08 to correct small errors.

Professional programmers who need to learn Python are this book’s primary audience. We provide specific help for you in a number of ways.

• Since Python is simple, we can address newbie programmers who don’t have deep experience in a number of other languages. We will call out some details in specific newbie sections. Experienced programmers can skip these sections.
• Since Python has a large number of sophisticated built-in data structures, we address these separately and fully. An understanding of these structures can simplify complex programs.
• The object-orientation of Python provides tremendous flexibility and power. This is a deep subject, and we will provide an introduction to object-oriented programming in this book. More advanced design techniques are addressed in Building Skills in Object-Oriented Design.
• The accompanying libraries make it inexpensive to develop complex and complete solutions with minimal effort. This, however, requires some time to understand the packaged components that are available, and how they can be integrated to create useful software. We cover some of the most important modules to specifically prevent programmers from reinventing the wheel with each project.

Chunked HTML	Chunked HTML, each section is a separate, smaller file
Complete HTML	The entire book in a single HTML file. Size of 2.1M
Complete PDF	The entire book in a single PDF file. Size of 4.7M

Comments – Changes – Additional Information

For more information, follow the S.Lott - Software Architect blog.

About the Author

Steven F. Lott is a consultant, teacher, author and software developer with over 30 years of experience building software of every kind, from specialized control systems for military hardware to large data warehouses.

About the License

These works are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works License. You are free to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work under the following conditions:

• Attribution.

  You must give the original author, Steven F. Lott, credit.

• Noncommercial.

  You may not use this work for commercial purposes. Contact the author to make arrangements to use this book for commercial purposes.

• No Derivative Works.

  You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of the work you are reusing or distributing.