Before buying this book I heard about LPTHW and the "controversy" around...
but obviously this is the internet and everyone is entitled say whatever they want so I didnt took them seriously.
Before reading this book, I've read some C++ concepts in the past (couples of years before) but they were simple as: types, functions, statements.. so nothing complicated, but I went thru this book with a tiny bit of knowledge..
At the beginning of the book I was amazed at how much fun I has having and how much better I was starting to understand those concepts (that I was already familiar with).
The way the book is structured its extremely good: making your hands dirty immediately it's really the right thing to do for a beginner.
It may be obvious for some one but wasn't for me, the fact that you should type everything you see and make it work on your own, and then read and check what is happening. Then type again and again and eventually, even if you don't REALLY understand the DEEPER MEANING of everything, you are still a step further to getting closer.
So everything was going fine and I was eager to go to the next lesson...
Till chapter 43 when he introduces the Class/Object..
I honestly went back on it a couple of times but every time I felt that there was something different... somethings has changed from before... there was no more fun, no more understanding.. but just: DO IT AS I DO AND SHUT UP.
There was little room for exploration as he presented a semi-empty script with empty classes that you should fill as he would... oh and yea he just introduced you to what a class is like.. so good luck with that.
You pass from ITS A, HAS A type of explanation to complete an already started script of several different classes with subclasses and inherits.. wtf? I've felt like I jumped 2 chapters...
It was challenging? absolutely but it wasn't fun... it wasn't discovering new things... it was desperation of trying to solve this exercises because you know that classes are an important topic...
And from there, it just got worst...
At chapter 47 you are introduced to an another fundamental topic: TESTS.
So as usual you start typing and typing and installing modules, you will get excited of all of this new stuff you will learn about... but you will be WRONG... because as soon as you finish he says:
GO ON INTERNET AND FIND OUT HOW TO USE AND INSTALL EVERYTHING YOU JUST DID.....
W.T.F... it took me a day to find out in the nose manual that their syntax was the same as unittest but just spelled with the format snake_case...
As a beginner, and as I have never seen what an test/assert_equal is, I WOULD HAVE APPRECIATED A BIT OF EXPLANATION before sending me online..
I had to go online and search for OTHER people tutorial about something that I was suppose to learn in this book... WTF AGAIN...
And from here honestly I just lost interest... he doesn't show anymore the "what you should" see section so you are left on your own... If you don't understand: too bad... If you do understand but misunderstand also too bad... For me was harder trying to understand what HE will have me to do rather than the code itself...
At the end of the book you will do automatic tests of his text game and deploy it online so he introduces some HTML concepts but honestly I just didn't care anymore and never finished.. and here brings me the major flaw about zed in my opinion.
He states at the beginning that he doesn't want you to teach everything, but he wants you to be autonomous and be able to understand what to search bla bla... Ok! its a good mentality! But there is a problem.. programming concepts are so deep and so many (even for a subject alone).. that you NEED at least something information to start and only then LEAVE THE REST TO YOU if you want more info...
Again: if I have to leave the beginner's book to search other tutorials for beginners to understand what has written in my beginner's book... I think that the book failed to do part of his job...
I then IMMEDIATELY went to PYTHON CRASH COURSE and things just pop out like flowers in spring... and it was because of how zed open my view of how to take a programming book..
So I recommend this book even despite the BIG disappointment of the last chapters, because I truly think that this book teaches you the discipline that you will absolutely need to start every other book.. but be aware you will not become a expert programmer after just this book... buy this together with PYTHON CRASH COURSE and think of them as one lesson.. typing (LPTHW) and understanding (PCC)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A Very Simple Introduction to the Terrifyingly Beautiful World of Computers and Code | The Next Step for New Python Programmers | Quickly Get Productive with Python | Become a Python Programmer and Have Fun Doing It | The Hands-On, Example-Rich Introduction to Pandas Data Analysis in Python | |
| User Experience Level | New to programming and/or Python | Perfect for everyone who’s already started working with Python, including junior developers and seasoned Python programmers upgrading to Python 3.6+ | Although this book is for people who may be new to programming altogether, it also caters to people who want to know how Python works and how it’s fundamentally different 'under the hood.' | For absolute beginners who’ve never written a line of code. | Any level of Python experience (none to fluent) New to data analysis. |
| Learning Approach | You’ll learn Python by working through brilliantly crafted exercises. Read them. Type their code precisely. (No copying and pasting!) Fix your mistakes. Watch the programs run. | Hands-on - you’ll go far beyond the basics and learn how to analyze a concept, idea, or problem and then how to deisgn solutions by working through 52 crafted projects. Also includes access to 12 hours of video files. | Takes you by the hand and teaching by examples that are explained line by line. There is heavy emphasis on examples that are fun and useful, including games, graphics, database applications, file storage, puzzles, and more. You will learn how to think 'Pythonically' and avoid common 'gotchas'. | Friendly, easy, full-color. Each chapter will tell you a bit more about programming. It will show you how to do something, and then invite you to make something of your own by using what you’ve learned. | Introduces key concepts through simple but practical examples, incrementally building on them to solve more difficult, real-world problems. Brings together practical knowledge and insight for solving real problems with Pandas, even if you’re new to Python data analysis. |
| Key Topics | Organizing and writing code; Object-orinted programming; Basic game development; Basic web development | Quick hacks; Data structures; Parsing text; SQL and object relational mapping | In addition to Python fundamentals, this book pays a lot of attention to intermediate and even advanced features, including list comprehension, generators, multidimensional lists (matrixes), and decorators. | Programming fundamentals Advanced programming Useful Python | "Tidy" data; Cleaning and munging data; How to fit your data to models ; Fitting models in other languages |
| Python Versions Covered | Python 3 | Python 3.6 | Python 3.0 with notes about adapting examples to Python 2.0. | Python 2.7 Python 3 | Python 3 (Anaconda) |
No customer reviews
Review this product
There are 0 customer reviews and 1 customer rating.
Most helpful customer reviews on Amazon.com
Amazon.com:
97 reviews
Adina B.
At the beginning of the book I was amazed at how much fun I has having...
9 April 2018 -
Published on Amazon.comVerified Purchase
Geoff Moraes
Learning Python is easy; teaching it is hard.
3 January 2019 -
Published on Amazon.comVerified Purchase
Dick Dowdell
This is the best how-to learn a programming language book I've used
20 March 2018 -
Published on Amazon.comVerified Purchase
DQ
When it says "the Hard Way," read, "the Right Way."
30 August 2018 -
Published on Amazon.comVerified Purchase
Amazon Customer
NOT FOR BEGINNERS
8 July 2019 -
Published on Amazon.comVerified Purchase