Brian Overland - Supercharged Python: Take Your Code to the Next Level

Books on Python aimed for the absolute beginner have become a cottage industry these days. Everyone and their dog, it seems, wants to chase the Python.

Were a little biased, but one book we especially recommend is Python Without Fear. It takes you by the hand and explains the major features one at a time. But what do you do after you know a little of the language but not enough to call yourself an expert? How do you learn enough to get a job or to write major applications?

Thats what this book is for: to be the second book you ever buy on Python and possibly the last.

Its safe to say that many people are attracted to Python because it looks easier than C++. That may be (at least in the beginning), but underneath this so-called easy language is a tool of great power, with many shortcuts and software libraries called packages thatin some casesdo most of the work for you. These let you create some really impressive software, outputting beautiful graphs and manipulating large amounts of data.

For most people, it may take years to learn all the shortcuts and advanced features. This book is written for people who want to get that knowledge now, to get closer to being a Python expert much faster.

This book offers different learning paths for different people.

• Youre rusty: If youve dabbled in Python but youre a little rusty, you may want to take a look at or only take a brief look at it.

• You know the basics but are still learning:Start with , which survey the abilities of strings and lists. This survey includes some advanced abilities of these data structures that people often miss the first time they learn Python.

• Your understanding of Python is strong, but you dont know everything yet: Start with , which lists 22 programming shortcuts unique to Python, that most people take a long time to fully learn.

• You want to master special features: You can start in an area of specialty. For example, describes the different ways of handling text and binary files.

• You want to learn advanced math and plotting software: If you want to do plotting, financial, or scientific applications, start with .

Even with advanced technology, our emphasis is on clarity, short examples, more clarity, and more examples. We emphasize an interactive approach, especially with the use of the IDLE environment, encouraging you to type in statements and see what they do. Text in bold represents lines for you to type in, or to be added or changed.

Several of the applications in this book are advanced pieces of software, including a Deck object, a fully functional RPN language interpreter, and a multifaceted stock-market program that presents the user with many choices. With these applications, we start with simple examples in the beginning, finally showing all the pieces in context. This approach differs from many books, which give you dozens of functions all out of order, with no sense of architecture. In this book, architecture is everything.

You can download examples from brianoverland.com/books.

This book makes generous use of tables for ease of reference, as well as conceptual art (figures). Our experience is that while poorly conceived figures can be a distraction, the best figures can be invaluable. A picture is worth a thousand words. Sometimes, more.

We also believe that in discussing plotting and graphics software, theres no substitute for showing all the relevant screen shots.