The Self-Taught Programmer: The Definitive Guide to Programming Professionally

VERY well written, excellent style. If you are a complete beginner it may advance too rapidly; it actually starts out quite basic, and if you are intermediate level and have been playing with Python for a while (as I) you can just breeze over the elementary stuff. I found the chapter(s) on OOP (classes etc.) particularly useful. I have been doing mostly functional and procedural type short programs and haven't paid much attention to OOP. But I am trying to get a handle on it now, (as I must if I'm gonna get anywhere with GA). The concepts were explained with code examples very clearly and in few pages! The section on BaSH is mostly review-over for me as I have been using Linux for a while now, but if you are also new to Linux (and you should get into it and dump MS ... don't get me started ...) it provides a very good intro to the command line and basic Linux usage, as well as "regular expressions" which are very good to know and apparently trip a lot of people up learning. You can even download the code snippets if you are too lazy to type them in (using the tinyurl web site). I am now working on the web scraper and plan to elaborate it for my own use (hint: don't you hate it when cool web sites won't 'let' you download the videos and full size pics ...). Recommend highly!

It's a great book for any new python programmer, especially those that learn in the self-taught way. It has a lot of examples and explanations that allow a reader to build the mental model of the language through experimentation. It is one of few books that adequately covered things in the way that you tend to model things when you -are- learning on your own. There's normally a strong possibility for gaps in knowledge when teaching yourself due to the way you can make assumptions without testing what the results would be, and this book doesn't necessarily cover ALL of them, but it does a good job with the numerous code samples of providing you fairly complete mental models of what's going on when you do various tasks in Python. I love that it takes that approach. I do wish that it covered some more of what is considered idiomatic in Python, but, that's very much a minor gripe on an excellent text for a certain kind of mindset and way of learning. Even with that being said there are a few chapters near the end that cover some best practices and ideas, but, not as deeply as I typically think about them. All in all a good resource that will help guide someone that's learning on their own on how to understand the language and achieve basic competence.

This book isn't quite what I thought it was. There are lots of free resources and free online versions of many IT books, including for Python. I thought this one would be about the "other" things you need to know as a programmer that you might have missed in not getting a degree. But no, this is "just" another book about how to program in Python. BUT, it is a good one. Is this one worth the $5 on Kindle? Perhaps. Finding a book that doesn't progress too quickly for the beginner is not easy. Finding a book with good exercises isn't easy either. I've read a bunch because it's taking me a while to get a grasp on Python. I just finished Chapter 4 and so far am really liking this book. I bought the Kindle version which has been more than adequate. In fact, I've done most of the reading on the go on my phone, then when I get home I work through the exercises at the end of the chapters. The set of exercises at the end of each chapter start easy, then the next exercise gets a little more involved, then a little more involved, till you have practiced the main ideas in that chapter. I really like this. If I run into a difficulty, I know exactly where to look for the answer, because only one new concept per exercise was called for. From the courses I've done on Coursera and EdX, and a couple online Python books, I'd say I like these exercises the best. I just wish there were more of them. I'm not sure it gives answers to the questions, since I haven't seen any, but I haven't needed any. I haven't had any problems with the Kindle version. Each example has a link to a webpage that includes the example. This is useful, because the example lines sometimes are longer than the Kindle can display, so you can't see the end of the line. Overall, I wouldn't really expect much more than the other Python books out there offer, but I think the manner of his presentation might be a bit more "down to earth" for the beginner. If you are having trouble following a lot of the books and courses on Python, I'd recommend that you press on and read more books and take more courses and don't let yourself get stuck on the bits that seem hard right now. It all slowly starts making sense as you go on, things get cemented in your memory, and the different approaches to explaining things start helping you to fill in your gaps. I wouldn't say this is the best book out there, but I think it might be one of the better beginner's books. I also wouldn't say this tells you much more about programming in general than the other beginning books out there. Take a look for free IT books on the web and you'll find a lot, though when you find one you love, you might want to buy it to have it on hand and to support the author. So, I have mixed feelings about this one based on what it seemed to present itself as, but for what it is, it's pretty good.

I am an HVAC designer by trade (no programming at all). After reading this book I feel equipped to change careers if I ever wanted to! This book lays things out very well and let’s you get straight to the coding! Don’t worry, theory is discussed too, but this book focuses on practicality…which is rarely used as a starting point in any engineering discipline. 10/10 would recommend

I'm in tech recruiting for experienced software engineers - we need to know our stuff if we don't want to get laughed away. I thought this was a great way to understand what I need to know in a very straight-forward way, and I was not wrong. This book really changed the way I recruit and has really influenced my perspective of professional programming in a way that makes conversations more interesting and effective. In fact, it's even encouraged me to try some of it and I've made a github account with some very basic practicing. I liked what I learned so much that I actually reached out to the author and asked if he would donate a few of these to the Django Girl's workshop I co-organize in Seattle, Washington, and he said yes! It's a workshop that aims to increase the presence of women in the tech industry and so this book is super relevant to the mission. To be clear, I would've given this book a five star rating anyway, but the graciousness of the author gives it an extra verbal star to boot. Thanks for helping all us gals out!

The beginning of the book was really nice with practice problems and such, but as it started to pick up, i could tell the chapters were possibly rushed. At that point i longed for more practice like on the command line but the book did provide that extra practice i desperately needed. The author is very generous on the links and resources. It made me a little upset that on the hangman game there was a line of code never taught in the previous chapters that somehow I was expected to know but never discovered it until i looked at the answer 2 hours of struggling later. I wanted to love this book but i put it down for a while when i got to the Bash chapter. I was inspired in the beginning only to say that i was disappointed in the end. To whoever reading this, best of luck to you on your programming journey.

After learning FORTRAN and procedural programming decades ago, I was at a lost when trying to retool with OOP languages such as Python. I read a couple of books that went over code and concepts. But I felt like something was missing. I could write simplistic programs but didn't think I was utilizing the full benefit of Python. Althoff's book helped fill in the gaps. He gave the most lucid explanation of OOP concepts that I've come across, as well as touching on practical subjects such as the command line, bash, regex, and GitHub. As a result I feel more empowered to write meaningful code. There's also a lot of good advice in the book about how to code. Other books will contain more information about syntax and GUIs. Read one of them, then buy Althoff's book. It's really a must-read if you're trying to learn Python on your own.

I'm not big into writing reviews but I had to write this for someone that once felt like me. I thought I was dumb, I couldn't grasp the concept of Python or any other language. I've tried codecademy, and online courses all ending in failure. I saw Corey on a talk show and immediately added his book to my Amazon cart. From the moment it arrived I was hooked. Each chapter starts with an inspirational quote that motivates you to keep going forward. I wanted to learn python so that I could get a job in the QA industry. After reading just a few chapters, I've decided that I want to be a software engineer. The entire book reads like a story and when things are explained it not only makes you ask questions, but they are answered in the next section. For the first time in my life I am actually writing in Python. I'm only on chapter three and I've already learned so much. For the people that haven't had much luck learning, this book is definitely for you. You are not alone. Everyone can learn from this book.