The Quick Python Book

Manning Publications Co.

May 3, 2001

This is a simple and (we hope) powerful book about a simple but (definitely) powerful language, Python. We wrote it because we wanted learning Python to be as easy as using it. Our goal is to teach you the fundamentals of Python programming in no more than a few hours, and to give you a good exposure to some of the really powerful Python libraries which are available.

If you've already heard enough about Python to want to learn it, great! If you're just idly looking through this book, we'll simply say that Python offers an ease of use and expressive power that is unmatched by any other language available today. It is suited for both short scripts and large programs, and handily beats Perl, C, C++, Java, and every other language we've ever seen, in terms of programmer productivity. It's an exciting time to be learning Python, too-the language is available in a mature, stable form for all major platforms, has an interface to a very powerful multiplatform graphical user interface toolkit, has many new libraries becoming available (in addition to the already large selection of libraries to help with math, the World-Wide Web, system scripting...), and has even made its debut integrated into the Java language. If you'd like a more detailed description, take a look at the first few chapters of the book.

To learn Python from this book, you should already know some computer language in reasonable detail. C, C++, Pascal, Perl, Visual Basic, Java, or many others will provide sufficient background. You don't need to be an expert; an understanding of basics such as strings, arrays, loops, conditional (if-then) statements, and so forth, will be fine.

Familiarity with object-oriented programming will certainly help in understanding the object-oriented aspects of Python. However, if you don't know anything about object oriented programming (and perhaps don't want to), that's alright-Python is an excellent procedural language, too.

There's not a lot more to say. We hope you find the book useful in your Python adventures!