★ 2023-06-15
Oliver offers a comprehensive guide to one of the world’s most important programming languages in this nonfiction work.
As the author points out in this new addition to the excellent QuickStart Guide series, the Python programming language is fundamental to our current world, from Google to Spotify to IBM to wide-reaching governmental systems (he enthusiastically extols Python as “an awesome programming language that lets you do a wide variety of tasks—everything from system utilities to business programs to games to website backends and even artificial intelligence”). Focusing on Version 3 of Python, Oliver presents his readers with a series of demonstrations and hands-on exercises. He starts with the basics—the installation of Python on a computer (not a phone or tablet)—and proceeds from there to outline the basic functions of Python, progressing to advanced functionality, statistics, and internet interaction, always advancing the complexity of Python “expressions.” As with all QuickStart guides, this one comes replete with bullet points, charts, and inset sections, and Oliver also includes increasingly complicated programming exercises for readers to do. He accompanies these exercises with technical commentary about the material he’s chosen to include: “While this is a perfectly acceptable way to handle this issue,” he writes, “it uses more lines and is more complex, so I opted to perform the casting inline.” Cumulatively, this choice to personalize his material emerges as the book’s greatest strength; it accentuates the signature feature of the entire QuickStart series of guides: the detailed approachability that thoroughly explains a subject without condescending to the reader. Oliver’s book is very much not for dummies or complete idiots, and his methodical, step-by-step walk-through is sure to calm the anxieties of entry-level programmers, although it might also shed light on some aspects of Python even for longtime users of the program. Readers looking to deepen their understanding of this ubiquitous programming language will find this book invaluable.
A lively and engaging Python-centered entry in the QuickStart Guide series.
