Book review "Learn Python the hard way"

When I ordered this book, I made a mistake, blinded by good reviews and cheap price 😃

My fault, because I wanted to refresh a bit my python skills but this book is for total beginner (non-programmer).

But finally, this is the kind of errors that does not hurt... Even the contrary, I quickly read this book and it was cool :)

Review of the different parts

This book starts very slowly, not a surprise actually 😃

It is illustrated by cool examples (I mean code snippets).
Sometimes, notions are less smooth and a bit parachuted like modules and later setup.py, but I say this because I tried to put me in the shoes of a total beginner.

After some time, it goes into more real world examples like programming a small game or a mini web app.
The chapters about the game with objects is nice but contains big snippet and a lot of prints.

The overall was pleasant to read but I cheated and do not followed "the hard way" (typing all the snippets) 😝

Strong opinion about programming...

The author has strong opinions, mainly to try to "keep is simple" for the reader. Here are some :

• "Inheritance is evil forest"
• "Multiple inheritance is evil queen"

The author also recommends "Shot gun prints", I don't know what to say about it, it's not totally true nor false.

...but not about language

He is preaching for making people learn a lot of languages :

• "When learning a language, don’t be a stupid tourist"
• "Don’t be religious with a language"

I'm not sure about his definition of knowing a language since he consider being able to learn a new language in 1 day to 1 week.

Critical about programmer job

Along the book (and even more in the "advice from an old programmer" section), the author is very critic about programmer job, and I find it very interesting.

For instance, it is said:

• "Become programmer, only if you can't imagine doing something else"
• "Programming as a profession is only moderately interesting."

It is also recommended to apply IT science to something real like physics, medicine or industry and not only "IT for IT".

Conclusion

I will conclude with this citation "Programming is the only form of art that allows you to create interactive art" and by saying that it is a nice book 👍