Dive Into Python 3
Mark Pilgrim’s Dive Into Python 3 is a hands-on guide to Python 3 (the latest version of the Python language) and its differences from Python 2. As in the original book, Dive Into Python, each chapter starts with a real, complete code sample, proceeds to pick it apart and explain the pieces, and then puts it all back together in a summary at the end. Dive Into Python 3 is a Python book for experienced programmers. Whether you’re an experienced programmer looking to get into Python 3 or grizzl
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(out of 6 reviews)
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Review by calvinnme for Dive Into Python 3
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Python now comes in two flavors–Python 3 and Python 2. The philosophy of programming in Python 3 diverges from Python 2 to the point that print statements written in three don’t even run properly in two. Unfortunately, so many of the books written using Python over the last few years are still using version 2.6 – which is backwards compatible with all previous versions. If you are buying this book because you are taking a class in which the teacher is using Python rather than teaching it -bioinformatics or visualization for example – this may cause you trouble. If you need to learn 2.6 or an earlier version of Python 2, please buy the previous edition.
If you are learning Python for the first time and it’s up to you as to what flavor of Python to learn, then I suggest you start with Python 3. It does fix some longtime problems with the Python language. In that case, this edition of “Dive Into Python” is what you want.
I tend to learn languages more readily if I write a simple program first then add to its complexity by having more complex aspects of the language revealed to me, which is basically the approach of “Dive Into Python”. What worked best for me when I learned Python 2 was to read the free online guide “Dive Into Python” which is incomplete but top-down, then switch to “Learning Python”, which is detailed but more academic and more of a bottom-up approach. For example, while this book is about 500 pages, the new “Learning Python” book by Mark Lutz is 1200 pages long.
The author of this book has continued his tradition of placing his book online free of charge if you wish to look through it. I have read this updated version in order to update to Python 3. However, the author realizes that if you like his book you’ll want a copy for yourself to carry about and in which to scribble notes. Sometimes you can make more money by being generous.
In summary, I highly recommend this book as a way to get started, but then you’ll probably want to proceed to “Learning Python” for advanced topics and as a reference.
Review by ErikB for Dive Into Python 3
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I came to this book after slogging through 200pgs of the tome that is Learning Python and getting nowhere. Dive into Python 3 is a more reasonable size, and from reading a few of the chapters online at [...], I felt that Mark Pilgrim had done a good job of writing a Python introduction. I would probably rate the content as 4 or 5 stars.
I was happy enough that I wanted to buy the physical printed edition of the book, to have as a reference and to support the author. I was expecting that the content had been professionally reformatted for book form, with suitable typeface selection and reflowed text. However, I was sorely disappointed when I received my printed copy. It would appear that SoHo Books has done nothing but take the PDF from Mark Pilgrim’s site and printed it. I might not mind, except that this was done very poorly. I immediately noticed that the typeface was small, sans-serif, and worst, dithered! The letters are drawn with small,fine dots as if this were printed on an old dot-matrix printer. The result is unlike any other printed book I have, and I consider this unacceptable. The fonts in the PDF appear to be vector drawn when I scale it, and thus SoHo has no excuse for not doing a cleaner job of scaling the pages down. And that’s all they did: take pages formatted for 8.5″ x 11″ and scale them down to about 5.5″ x 7″ or so. Further, they wastefully left 1.75″ of dead white space on top and 1.5″ on the bottom.
This cheap printing is a shameful waste of a tree, when it could have been done really well. I would have a much higher quality version if I had printed it on my own printer. I thank the author for licensing his work with the Creative Commons license, but I’m sad to report that I’ll be returning this print version. I’ll hold out hope that these problems could be corrected for future printings.
Review by George E. Haake for Dive Into Python 3
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I like the book mainly purchased as a handy copy of all that is good and available on the authors website. However the layout is tiring and unconventional enough to be distracting.
Review by J. Hopson for Dive Into Python 3
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The print quality of this book is awful. My copy looks like it was printed on a cheap inkjet printer. The print is tiny. Really tiny. And the top and bottom margins are 1-3/8″ each! Seriously, is this a joke?
This book probably has some great content, but the print quality is so bad it’s worthless.
Review by Jürgen Geuter for Dive Into Python 3
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This book is absolutely great if you want to get into the Python language. It’s writing is clear and understandable, its examples tie the different aspects of the language together in a way that quickly allows you to be productive with Python.
I think if you have absolutely no previous programming knowledge (in other languages like PHP or Java for example) you might have a hard time to really get the most out of this book, you might either want to check out some generic tutorials out first, but if you do know basic programming concepts, this book will enable you to write great Python code to solve your problems very quickly.