Reviews for Sams Teach Yourself Python in 24 Hours

1. Good introduction to Python - worth the purchase price!

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, May 12th, 2001

   The book is divided roughly into 3: The first section covers concepts of Python programming, the second deals with Python's OOP feature set and the final chapters take a look at programming GUI apps using the TkInter widget set. The author thoughtfully provides all of the sample code and exercises as a download from his web site.

   My main reason for buying the book was to get up to speed on the basic concepts of Python as quickly as possible, in order to be able to maintain a suite of administrative tools written in Python as part of my job, and it has satisfied this requirement admirably. Unlike a lot of the "Teach Yourself XXX in YY Hours/Days" series of books, the end of chapter exercises are actually fun to do. Each chapter is rounded off with a short reference section for those who want to follow up on any of the topics discussed.

   The middle section introduces Pythons OOP features. I found this section reasonably easy reading; each new concept is introduced in a logical sequence, and comparisons are made with other OOP-enabled languages, primarily C++ and Java. The examples given are initially fairly trivial, serving to illustrate a concept rather than actually do something useful, put once the reader starts to gain familiarity with Python OOP, slightly more productive examples are given.

   The final section covers GUI applications using TkInter. This topic is, at present, pretty much irelevant to me, although I did skim quickly through it just to get a feel for the basic groundwork. The text struck me as pretty much in keeping with the rest of the book in terms of writing style and approach to the subject matter.

   Overall, a god book for an absolute Python beginner, although you will undoubtedly find the text easier to follow if you have a little experience with other programming languges.