Starting Out with Python (Starting Out With...)

Mfragin said
This book can be summarized as a late objects, no graphics, approach to teaching the fundamentals of programming. The focus of this book is on text-only programs that develop a functional programming style.

If you have any Gaddis Java book, you will notice the similarities to this book. There are numerous programming exercises and algorithm challenges for each chapter, which is one of the book's strengths.

The fact that this book feels like a re-writing of the author's Java books, however, is also a weakness. Many of Python's strongest and most unique features are simply not covered here. You will not find much information on the robust Python library, nor any mention of semi-advanced topics like list comprehensions. Even the simple-to-use, but effective, Pickle and cPickle modules are left out.

At times I felt like Gaddis was trying to make Python act like Java. Some concepts core to Java, like private attributes, are covered here. The details, however, are absent, leading the student to believe that a double underscore attribute is truly private (not merely "mangled"). This may seem like nit-picking, but that's my point. If you are looking for a book to learn the Python language, skip this one and go with Mark Lutz' Learning Python (Help for Programmers), which will teach you a lot more about the particular strengths of the Python language.

If, however, you are looking for a textbook for a beginning programming class, you could do much worse than this. The numerous exercises are helpful to a teacher and the writing is very clear. There are also topics covered here that should be covered in an intro class that are not covered in many of the books aimed only at learning Python.

I am a big fan of Gaddis' Starting Out with Java: Early Objects (3rd Edition) book, which I think is one of the best Java texts available. Too bad this book wasn't more...um...Pythonic.