Fluent Python: Clear, Concise, and Effective Programming Paperback – 29 April 2022

Good, detailed book which gives a comprehensive overview of the Python fundamentals.The book is easy to read, the writing style of the author is very approachable and the book comes with lots of examples.Might be a bit overwhelming as a first read on Python as the material goes pretty deep into details of the language.

This is my favourite python book, and the one I regularly recommend/suggest other engineers buy.It's an incredibly detailed primer on built-in and stdlib, I occasionally use it as reference, but it can - and should - be read cover-to-cover. Gives you a great understanding of the internals of python and it's datastructures so that you can write robust and performant code.

Of course, we programmers know that everything we could want to know is out there, in fragmentary form, on the web. But I have a tediously fastidious mind that likes to keep the distinction clear between what I know and what I have yet to find out. As such, books are my preferred approach to a systematic learning process. I would have been very grateful then if someone had told me at the start of my Python journey that what and all I needed to read was the Tutorial at python.org, David Beasley's epically concise Python Distilled, and this, the 'lizard book'. This book demands a close, paragraph by paragraph reading and maybe some re-reading of some sections till full or at least deeper understanding dawns. After this book there isn't really anywhere to go except the source code and the dry and voluminous language docs. Whatever isn't actually in the book is there on the accompanying fpy.li website.A first point is that this is not a book for the beginner. One needs to have a reasonable grasp of the language having worked a while with it, being able to muddle along, but also knowing one is just muddling along and wishing to get things onto a more solid foundation.As such, I'm anxious not to let prospective readers be put off by the review that asserts that the author does not get to the point. There is no flab in this book. It is a big book, but a serious programmer could only wish that the book was even bigger and even more detailed. Python is as much an ideology about how to do things properly as a programming language. It is deceptively easy to muddle along in Python on the basis of what one has already come to know in more 'primitive' programming languages. But for the programmer determined to get the best from a language that has a near endless toolbox of subtle features and constructs the learning curve goes far deeper and longer than a superficial comprehension can suspect. Perhaps that reviewer is thinking about the soapbox sections at the end of each chapter in which the author considers the merits or not of particular decisions made in the complex, democratic language design process? If so, it should be pointed out that even here the author is inviting the reader to think more deeply and clearly about why such features were implemented as they were and what the alternatives might be.I have two complaints, notwithstanding which I still regard the book as indispensable and insubstitutable. Firstly, I wish very much there was a hardcover edition because the kind of reading this book demands means that the paperback cover is not going to survive even as much as a first reading. I would also like to see, perhaps in a future edition, a more comprehensive and systematic index. Again and again, one encounters situations where we know we have read something about this in 'the lizard book' but finding the requisite nugget or gem is not always that easy. The book does not work particularly well as a reference.A final point is that the book is a great pleasure to read without any loss of clarity. Although the author's knowledge is clearly formidable, he invites the reader to accompany him on a journey as a fellow traveller, pointing out the many small discoveries he has made in his own passage. One quickly comes to feel assured that even where one's own understanding might falter, everything you need to achieve understanding is written down there if one just reads it carefully enough. Few technical authors pass this test. The man is a natural teacher who always places himself in the point of view of the student and proceeds from there.A huge, rigorous, fractally detailed but profoundly enjoyable journey of a book. As simple as possible but no simpler. The mighty and beautiful 'lizard book'

I have many, many programming books. Most have turned out to be rubbish, however this came as a really pleasant surprise - it's really excellent with interesting and useful content.Above all its also enjoyable and interesting to read. It's well written and well edited.I would have no hesitation in recommending it to anyone who wants to use Python as a serious language and not just throw a few scripts together.I come from a world of C++, C# and Typescript and was sceptical whether Python would be a serious language worth learning and using. This book has given me a lot of confidence that it is.

I've only started to learn Python and I've read one basic introductory text book before starting to read this one. Even after gaining some basic knowledge of Python, I found that I still needed to do a fair amount of googling to understand the examples used in this book. I'm not a professional programmer but I can programme in other languages which does help. So in conclusion, I think this book does assume a fair amount of knowledge of Python and is not suitable for the the absolute beginner. In my opinion it is not a self contained book, i.e. one needs to refer to other text books and to google to understand everything. This makes it more of a challenging read. Hence, I've given it 4 rather than 5 stars. Hopefully after reading all of the book, everything will make sense.

This is a must have book for everyone who wants to bring their Python programming to the next level. I am looking it to this book from time to time to refresh something. It should be on the side of the desk of every Python programmers or aspiring programmers or students. Highly recommended.

Luciano's fluid style and years of working with Python (since version ~1.6) have brought about this intense, expanded 2e. Each chapter tells you what has changed (and a lot has changed in the language). It deserves a very close reading, probably several very close readings, and at least one code-along reading in order to cement the concepts. Luciano refers liberally to the documentation, and that is where to go for a blow-by-blow of the object models in the book. But, this text is much friendlier than the docs, with better examples, and a more approachable style. This *will* equip you to go back to the docs and become a real expert in the nuts and bolts of python, such that approaching the underlying C source code is the next natural step. Excellent intermediate text. Nobody (maybe Guido himself and Raymond Hettinger, maybe) will know everything in this book. A tour de force, and an excellent Xmas gift for the Pythonista in your household.

I had initially some mixed feeling prior buying this book but it all turned out good. It serves me well and helps me catch up on things I should know. I would recommend it to anyone willing to make the jump into more thoughtful programming.