Hi,
I need your advice about Python book. I consider buying: “Python Tricks: A Buffet of Awesome Python Features”. Any recommendation about this book, it is helpful? And second question, that I should read any other book before that one? Thanks for your help :)
Fluent Python
I decided to read Serious Python before this one
I’ve never read that one, but I’ve read several No Starch books. They’re by far my favorite regarding the way content is provided. Black Hat Python was great and Effective C really helped my C skills by clarifying info on certain topics. I think I’ve been continuously reading something published by them for at least the last 2 years.
Great more to add to my reading list! I like their books too. I started to read fluent Python but in the preface it kind of warned not to read it too early in one’s Python journey so I stepped back and read serious Python, which was great. That led me to wanting to explore functional programming more in Python, but the book ok reading on that is spinning my head a bit 😅
I’ve read a ton of software engineering books and python specific books and haven’t found any of them to be any better than just reading the online documentation about the standard library. https://docs.python.org/3/library/index.html
There are a bunch of books I would recommend if you just want to read and grow yourself as a software developer. But if your goal is to better understand what you can do with python and how, you can’t really get better than the standard library documentation.
At a bare minimum I would expect that anyone who calls themselves familiar with Python to know the table of contents of the page I linked, even if you don’t know all the components in each section. But for any given problem you should know where in the Python docs you can go to learn more about the broad area of solutions.
Out of that, I specifically recommend doing a deeper dive into the following modules:
- string
- datetime
- enum
- itertools
- functools
- pathlib
- csv (if that sounds like something you would use)
- os
- argparse (if you build CLI tools)
- logging
- asyncio (this gets sticky fast, but is more and more relevant every day)
- json
- unittest (in the real world we almost exclusively use a 3rd party tool, pytest)
- sys
Thanks a lot for your answer. I always look forward to learn about software development. Could you recommend any book to be better software engineer? I working with Python on backend and my question is connected with it :)
Fluent Python FTW
Not an individual book recommendation per se but keep an eye on the coding/book bundles offered at Humble Bundle. I grabbed Effective Python in one of their bundles a few weeks ago and they like to run bundles of No Starch books as well.
it’s kinda old, (beginning of Python 3 days) but the sheer amount of useful information in this book is unparalleled. I hear there’s a new edition coming, but no solid ETA yet.
Oh that note, another oldie but a goodie Dive Into Python 3
Fluent python!
Automate the boring stuff
Groking algorithms
“Head First Python” Refreshingly different approach from other coding books I have read. Also enjoyed “Automate the Boring Stuff”
don’t use python. use malbolge.
In addition to my previous non-answer:
I’m sure there are better books on the subject you can buy for $30, but looking at the table of contents of this book it actually looks pretty good.
Fluent Python + Effective Python First is more complete and advanced, second is great if you are beginner/intermediate and want to level up really fast.
Is Effective Python the book by Brett Slatkin? Thanks!
Yes