Book Review - Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner

In a world full of technical books its sometimes hard to decide which one to buy. I’ve decided to do a review of a technical book i've recently read, but I'm going to keep it short and sweet. The book that I will be reviewing is called Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner and Michael Dawson wrote it.

Now I’d like to make clear that I am an absolute beginner when it comes to python or any other programming language, I’m barely competent at shell scripting in bash! So if you already know something about python, this may be a little basic for you. I’m not saying that you won’t learn anything from this book; you just might find it a little easy for you.

The book starts by explaining why one might want to use python. It gives some of the benefits and will tell you why the author believes that it is a good programming language to learn first. This section also includes some history. It was this introduction that made me want to read on.

The book starts with the very basic “game over” program, which is really a cleverly disguised “hello world” program. Each exercise in the book builds on what comes before it and lays the foundation for the next exercise. The exercises are entertaining and fun to complete and the author organized them in a logical manner. He also keeps the reader entertained by adding his own style of humor without getting in the way of the technical stuff. Perhaps a couple of concepts could have been better explained but if you stick with it, you’ll soon figure it out.

I’d recommend Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner to anyone who would like to learn about Python and have little or no experience with python. I gave the book to a friend, who is extremely competent in awk, to read through and he told me that the syntax was similar between the two, so if you have other programming experience, you may want something a little more advanced. This book was perfect for me and I am currently attempting to purchase the book (which I never do) because the library is going to stop me from renewing it sooner or later. If I had one criticism it would be that the book is quite expensive, but if you buy second hand you should be able to get it for under $40. Overall, its 2 thumbs up from me.

-The Thoth-