Automate the Boring Stuff with Python: Practical Programming for Total Beginners

Fully agree with other 5 star comments shown here. If you want a Python book with well explained text and examples to guide you through the learning curve of Python programming, buy this. I have been looking for ages for a book that explains in a easy to follow, step by step fashion how to understand and progress coding in Python, this book does just that. It manages to be clear and ensure the reader can understand exactly what is going on. It is also good for looking up how to do things when you just need a reference book, the index covers 19 pages. There is also quite a lot covered in the book, as a learner this will take you from first steps to well along the road to creating quite advanced Python programs. The book even has a nice feel cover and as it says on the back, it uses a durable binding that won't snap shut each time you open it to refer to it. To top it off the code used is downloadable for free as well. An excellent book, well done Al Sweigart and "no starch press", you deserve the praise!

If you want to learn programming, Python is a fantastic beginners programming language. This book is absolutely superb as it covers all the basics as well as telling you how to do some common tasks with Python. I work as a programmer, and I really wish they had books like this for other programming languages. Sure, a book can teach you about variables, loops etc, but what about common tasks like reading CSV files etc? This book gives some fantastic examples and will really get you started programming in Python. It is very simple to follow for beginners, and will give you a solid foundation. If you're not programming yet, then you need to get started. Anyone can learn programming and should learn it because it allows you to do so much more with your computer. An outstanding book, even for the experienced programmer!

A good starting point for a beginner to launch into the world of python. Good end of chapter questions and project to reinforce learning.

Great Book ! Real everyday programming for the beginner and intermediate alike. It may not be everyone's cup to tea, but for me it was perfect. Let me explain. I'm not a full time programmer. Back in the day however (1980's) I used to write tons of stuff in Northstar and Sinclair Basic, and Fortran a little later on. With a few changes of jobs, and finding it difficult to produce any productive programs, my programming went to the wall (for about 22 years !!!) I really wanted something I could hook into everyday life that did not need me to gather lots of reference books and bash away in a hit and miss fashion. This book shows you how to hook into emails, word documents, excel spreadsheets and the like (including graphics), and produce some great results. It has really got me back into "amateur" programming again and am using it at work to to extract and manipulate data from our bespoke systems. It goes further and explains the use of pip to add modules to the environment, which was the game changer for me. Someone somewhere has already tried to do what you want to do and already has the module . . . . fantastic ! I already have quite a few Python books and they were in the main quite good, but this is the most used, the most read and the most valuable on my computer bookshelf. For the price I would recommend it to anyone.

A book for the beginner and a revision or 'dip into' book for anyone needing examples and reminders. I've looked at a few Python books and this is, in my opinion, the best out there. There are lots of examples and how-to's covering most aspects of the basics of Python. It's written in clear plain English and encourages you to try the code as read. It also explains what the code is doing - some books assume a knowledge of Python whilst claiming to be useful to the beginner. One thing this book is not, nor does it claim to be, is a comprehensive delve into the deep bowels of Python. If you want that look elsewhere.

If you really want to learn python to an advanced level you cant go wrong with this book. Look no further. I can assure you this is the very best book out there by far and I am truly enjoying it. Finish this book and you will be on a really good position with Python. Also the book is really well explained. For the very beginners who never programmed before, the book is just perfect, however, for people who has some programming basic knowledge (like myself) it might be a bit boring at the beginning but does get really interesting after a few initial chapters. Being very honest, this is not just the best Python book I have seen, but actually the best learning book I have seen, with tons of interesting projects. Give it a try and you won't regret buying it. Very well done Al.

I bought it expecting a format like "Boring task #219: check for heap space erors in logfile and mail to a mailgroup at 7:00" python code as follows. "Boring task #541: perform a query, and if it results in some rows, perform a second query. If that results in something email me" python code follows "Boring task #761: Query a webservice". A cookbook if you will. This book goes to the other extreme: it does not show how to automate anything. So I'm not really sure about this, and tend to advise you not to buy it, but do skim over it in a bookshop to get the general idea. The book has nice practice examples, called projects, at the end of each chapter, but they are not that useful. The multiple choice questions however are quite good at the end of each chapter, but they alone cannot warrant the price nor the shelf space. Lemme explain: Python can be taught in 1 hour, so having to read 350 pages seems a bit silly. I believe it could be better organized: Chapter 1 - let it be as it is, it is some generic selling of python. Explain that the book should be read from A to Z. The projects are interesting but put them at a final chapter. Describe the general task to automate, then some specifics, then some hints. The author in each falls into the trap of describing line by line so that there is nothing creative left for the reader. Chapter 2 - examples and explanation of readable code and why it is so important. Missing in this book. The variable names the writer uses are usually bad. Explain syntax chaining immediately. End chapter with a simple regex, and introduce pythons (r) for raw. Chapter 3 - short overview of p2 and where it is used, followed side by side examples of python 2 and python 3. - first try out some very powerful example such as - - reading excel and - - some web scraping of bitcoin prices for example and mailing the user, so that the user within 20 pages will see the power of python, and also including the java code for comparison (both codes must work of course). - chapter 1 should include more error messages while trying to get IDLE working. - after about 100 pages the author writes that teaching regular expressions should be taught before teaching programming, which is absurd. Also the writer does NOT sell regex to the newbies, because in the second half of the chapter he forgot the reader was not a programmer, and tries to treat the whole theory of everything regex python has to offer. NOBODY wants to learn regex out of curiosity, because (1) regex looks ugly and (2) complicated logic is unreadable by yourself after some weeks. And readable code is everything. It is also not clear whether to pick up topics at random in this book or to read it from A to Z. Another complaint is that the source code after page 100 onward doesn't work but the reader should figure out easily what the error is and how to fix it, so it's just a minor complaint. In the end, this book is not for kids, and only the first 5 chapters would be useful for non programmers, I can program already and found it a very slow book, that explains things at random and some techniques later in the book would make the examples in the first part dumb.

This is an excellent book for the beginner programmers and experience programmers who would like to learn the Python language. What I learnt in the first chapter of the book was not available in any of the Python books I have come across. To ensure a good understanding of the Python language the writer has adopted plain English. I will recommend this book to anyone who would like to learn Python with minimal fuss and very quickly. I learnt a lot from the book that I hard to order a paperback copy for my nephew who would like to learn programming.