Python Without Fear

by Brian Overland

Praise for this book, Python Without Fear “This is really a great book. I wish I’d had it when I was learning Python.” –John M. Wargo, author of Apache Cordova 4 Programming Praise for the previous book in the series, C++ Without Fear “I’m in love with your C++ Without Fear book. It keeps me awake for hours during the night. Thanks to you, I got most of the idea in just a few hours.” –Laura Viral, graduate physics student at CERN and Istanbul, Turkey “It’s hard to tell where I began and ended with your book. I felt like I woke up and literally knew how to write C++ code. I can’t overstate the confidence you gave me.” – Danny Grady, senior programmer/analyst at a Fortune 500 Company
Whether you’re new to programming or moving from another language, Python Without Fear will quickly make you productive! Brian Overland’s unique approach to Python Register your product at for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available.

Genres: Programming, Reference, Technical

454 pages, Paperback

Published October 6, 2017

Reviews

[J.G. Follansbee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a great introduction to a language every programmer should know. I'm a programming dabbler, but I've never written anything in Python. This book gave me a lot of confidence that I could learn it quickly and avoid the intricacies of C++. I love the dozens of examples and the encouragement to think "pythonically." The author gave me a copy of the book, and I'm eager to try out his ideas.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me, Reading This Book: ❌😱

I love coding in Python, and I am on a path towards volunteering my knowledge of it to others.

This is an excellent book on the basics of Python - something I am finding out how best to teach others. So this was a great primer for my volunteering.

Definitely check it out if you are in a similar situation of myself, or if you want to learn Python as someone new to the language!

4.4/5

[William Schram · Rating 5 out of 5]

Python Without Fear by Brian Overland is an introduction to the Python Programming Language for Beginners. Although it does have little snippets that talk about what is going on “Under the Hood” so to speak, these are somewhat few and far between. However, before I go any deeper into this review, I am somewhat of a beginner myself. The book is written for Python 3.6.1 and the IDLE environment that goes along with it. As of my writing this review, I have Python 3.7.1 and I don’t notice any major differences.

As with most computer languages, there are a ton out there. This might make one ask “Why this language and not that one?” Overland explains why Python might be a good choice for what you want to do. While he does praise the language pretty extensively, Overland does admit that Python is not without flaws. A lot of these are instances that might not occur for a beginner.

I really like this book for several reasons. It told me how to use IDLE to greater effect, for instance. Like when I make a mistake, it told me that I didn’t have to retype the whole thing which is great. I didn’t want to use IDLE for exactly that reason, but now I don’ t have that excuse anymore. The book has little snippets of code that you can run in IDLE. It has exercises that have you change small portions of code to achieve a different result. Say you have a line of code that changes Celsius to Fahrenheit or vice versa. You can personalize it and have it say which measure is which.

Programming in itself is a skill that you develop by doing. This is another reason that I like this book. All of the books I have on programming do the same, but I suppose I really like how the author includes the format of the language. Take the idea of whitespace, this is something that doesn’t happen for a programmer in C or C+ or a lot of other languages. Overland takes time to talk about standards of Syntax as well, which might be helpful to Intermediate Programmers. As I said, I am not really a programmer and some of the thought processes required are a bit unusual to me.

Other than that, the book also contains little asides that deepen understanding, or ways to optimize what you made. My only real issue is that I need a setup that can allow me to look at the book without setting it on my knee. It is a real challenge to look from it to what is happening.

Other than that, there really isn’t much to complain about for this book. It has a lot to like and not much to dislike.

[Russell L · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have been through this book 3 times and each time I find more typo errors. The first time through I just read the book and did not work any exercises. The second time I took the time to carefully read and work a few of the exercises. The third time through I worked through all the exercises. I found mistakes in the exercises in almost ever chapter, some cost me hours try to do the exercise. One such as using __mult__ and not __mul__ and others where it was requested that we use __div__ when in order to complete the exercise __rdiv__ was needed. Many of the exercises have no reference in the text to what is requested and just have to search other materials. This book was not very well written or thought out. This book is not for beginners. I would not recommend this book to anyone. So far I have only not been able to figure out one of the exercises or find the mistakes in the exercise. Also don't use IDLE use Spyder or something equivalent if you plan on working the exercises.