Quick Review My review for the impatient reader:
Why I picked it up: It promised insight from a collection of programming language inventors.
Why I finished it: Although there was less depth than I expected, it was interesting to see how divergent the interviewees’ opinions are on some topics.
I’d give it to: A serious programmer who has been working for a few years and is ready to grow beyond the usual “how to” books and is looking for a more contemplative book.
I just downloaded a copy of Chapter 1 (“Text”) from The Python Standard Library By Example straight to my iPod Touch. It is a different chapter than is available from the Addison-Wesley page I mentioned here previously. The 317 pages in the sample include the table of contents and index along with the full text of chapter 1, covering the string, textwrap, re, and difflib modules.
Check it out via the iTunes Store
The full version of The Python Standard Library By Example is now available through Safari Books Online. As I announced in February, the “rough cuts” edition was posted before final editing was complete. The final edition is now available for Safari subscribers.
When you order directly from Addison-Wesley, The Python Standard Library By Example is available in EPUB and PDF format unencumbered by DRM. There are no passwords or locked files, just a personalized watermark. The eBook can be purchased by itself, or in a bundle with the physical book.
Addison-Wesley has posted a PDF of Chapter 2, “Data Structures,” from The Python Standard Library By Example. The file contains 145 pages covering the collections, array, heapq, bisect, Queue, struct, weakref, copy, and pprint modules. It also includes the table of contents and index from the complete book, for reference.
What’s New in 1.1? This point update includes new filters to ignore words commonly encountered in software documentation and other writing about computer programs. These include Python language built-ins, importable modules, words that match the names of packages on the Python Package Index, CamelCase words, and acronyms. There is also a new spelling directive for creating a local word list within a document.
I write a lot using reStructuredText files as the source format, largely because of the ease of automating the tools used to convert reST to other formats. The number of files involved has grown to the point that some of the post-writing tasks were becoming tedious, and I was skipping steps like running the spelling checker. I finally decided to do something about that by creating a spelling checker plugin for Sphinx, released as sphinxcontrib-spelling.
Cameron Laird interviewed me about The Python Standard Library By Example for InformIT. I enjoyed our conversation, and I think the interview came out well. Thanks, Cameron!
Lennart Regebro sent me a copy of his Porting to Python 3 following PyCon 2011, and now that work on my own book is nearly complete I was finally able to sit down and study it. I have two major Python 3 porting projects ahead of me soon, and I hoped that Lennart’s book would guide those projects. I was not disappointed.
Quick Review Inspired by Gene Ambaum and Bill Barnes’ review short-cuts, here’s my review for the impatient reader:
What’s New in 1.1? This point update includes new filters to ignore words commonly encountered in software documentation and other writing about computer programs. These include Python language built-ins, importable modules, words that match the names of packages on the Python Package Index, CamelCase words, and acronyms. There is also a new spelling directive for creating a local word list within a document.