Rating: 
Summary: computer science takes a major step backwards
Review: I gave this book two stars only because the author clearly put a great deal of effort into writing it. The effort is wasted, though, because Python stinks. (I'm capturing my thoughts here for now until I submit a more tersely worded editorial to IEEE >>Computer<<, where I referee on, among other topics, programming linguistics.)Why does Python stink? Here are but a few reasons: 1. It relies upon indentation, not meaningful artifacts such as {} or begin-end or do-done, to delimit the range of compound statements. This is handy for rough-and-ready scripting at an interactive terminal but dreadfully irresponsible and error-prone for lengthy, permanent programs that live in disk files. Come to think of it, is two tabs more deeply indented or less deeply indented than seventeen spaces? Where is this documented? Why should white space, usually negligible, be lexically significant in certain contexts; and why should lexical analyzers run afoul of issues (such as mapping tabs to spaces) that are typically dealt with by the "line discipline" subsystems of tty device drivers? GIVE ME A BREAK! 2. It lacks the generalized for( init; test; reinit ) loop, which is an astonishing oversight. Every language that I can think of that was invented after 1969 offers one. 3. For a purportedly OO language, it offers no _easy_ way for me to determine to what class an object belongs. I suppose I can hack it up with those double-underscore-bracketed attribute names, but I should be able to say: if O is instance of class1 : stmt unless I want to write a function that compares the [0:0] slice of the object (which, by the way, fails for scalar objects) against [], (), {}, etc., until it finds a match. Oyez, oyez: Not only does Python offer nothing new; indeed, it indulges laziness at the expense of rigorous, quality-minded software engineering. It smacks of "BC with classes" (for those of us who have been on UNIX long enough to remember the days when BC was touted as a realistic tool). Don't keep up with the Joneses this time; don't chase after this pathetic excuse for a programming language. Stick with Java, and deal with its dearth of string-matching functionality; or stick with Perl, and deal with its syntactic sensory overload.
Rating: 
Summary: Good introductory text, poor reference text
Review: Given the title, I was expecting a reference book something like the excellent "Programming Perl" (HIGHLY recommended). I was disappointed - this book is obviously not intended to be used as a reference. It may serve well as a lengthy introduction to Python to beginning programmers, but I find it incredibly frustrating.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor organisation, Great content.
Review: If you thinking of using this as your first Python book, forget it. The structural organisation of this book is not that great, although contentwise it is complete. Because of the poor organisation, I would recommend reading a more organised book first e.g, Learning Python by the same author. Only then can you get the most out of this book, otherwise you will be very confused and frustrated within the first few pages. That said, this book will take you to Python gurudom if you manage to work through it. I think the author needs to be given credit for releasing such a bible of information in this world starved of Python books!!
Rating:
Summary: Long Road to a Small House
Review: Like so many reviewers here, I was disappointed in this book. I did think the introduction showed promise, but the book moved along so tediously, I kept finding myself saying "yea, yea, yea---get on with it already!" I wish Mr. Lutz would keep in mind that a reader can re-read a point not understood the first time around; it's really irritating to have the author repeat and repeat and repeat the same damn point over and over. Perhaps this point bears repeating. Just kidding, but if I wrote like Mr. Lutz I would assume you didn't get it the first time around and make you suffer through three renditions of the same litte essay. Oh, for the straight forward exposition of Kernighan and Plauger or the subtle wit of Larry Wall---now those guys can write!
Rating: 
Summary: Thick book, somwhat chaotic
Review: Python is a great programming language and Mark Lutz did a lot for it, by writing this big textbook. Still, I would have wished the book to be more systematic, especially having chapter titles which later on helped me to find things again. In his next book: "Learning Python" he implemented more logic:-)
Rating:
Summary: Poor show from the Nutshell guys
Review: I really like the O'Reilly books - I work as a professional programmer and the number of times they have helped me out is countless. That made this book all the more disappointing. The style is all over the place - halfway between the "Dummies" series (which are very good - in their place) and the traditional O'Reilly "for programmers, by programmers" style. While I wouldn't carp about style of a technical book if it were at least clear unfortunately the prose here is so bad it makes the book almost impenetrable. I just couldn't get the hang of the language from this - and wouldn't advise others to try. There have got ot be easier ways than this to learn. Tom
Rating:
Summary: Not a good place to start
Review: This is one of O'Reilly's worst books. In the introduction, where Mark is giving a demo the Python language, he gives Programming examples without explaining the constructs the programs use or how they achieve their goals in terms of those constructs. It is impossible to understand the points he is trying to make. The editing of the book is just plain sloppy. The beginning is not what a beginning should be and I am so put off by the beginning I hesitate to read the rest of the book. I'm not sure why O'Reilly let this book get to press. Most of the books I have from them are excellent.
Rating:
Summary: poorly organized introduction to python
Review: I thought this would be similar to Programming Perl, both a good introduction to the language *and* a decent reference. Unfortunately, it does neither task well. It fails as a reference because 1) it is poorly organized: information on each concept (printing, for example), is scattered throughout the book; 2) the index is atrocious. There is no way to find the key description of any part of the language using the index, and I often find important concepts in the book that are not in the index. The poor index, combined with the scattered organization, means I'm constantly frustrated when I want to look up some particular element of the language. As an introduction, the book is OK. I would have liked to see some meatier code examples. As another reviewer mentioned, the examples are more about the syntax of the language than actual applications that you might learn from. This is a style point -- if you learn best from large chunks of example code, this is not the book for you. Also, key modules (sys and math, for example) are barely mentioned. --Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu
Rating:
Summary: Intended for non-programmers.
Review: As a professional programmer, I have always been pleased with the quality of O'Reilly titles. Unfortunately, this book was my first disappointment. The tone of the book is that of an introduction intended for non-programmers. In terms of actual hard, factual information, this book leaves a lot to be desired. I would perhaps recommend it to anyone needing to learn Python with no other programming experience, but definitely not to anyone else.
Rating:
Summary: Nutshell? What kind of tree was that?
Review: Okay...for the hard-core, knowledgeable programmer, this is book will be annoying--it takes you through the basics of programming, OOP and so on. The sagacious hacker will know all of these things. Good for you. For the rest of us, this book is a God-send. I, for one, am a failed programmer--I've poked at C, C++, VBA, VB...all to no avail. It was all a tad too confusing for me. Programming Python, however, showed me how this all works and--added to Learning Python and the Python Pocket Reference--I'm set. There may be some other small features not included in these books, but I'll worry about them when I get there. For those of you that are already there--why are you using Python in the first place?
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