Python Tricks: A Buffet of Awesome Python Features

I consider myself an 'early intermediate' Pythonista, with about three years of self-taught experience in the language, bolstered by all the good resources out there online. I first ran across Dan's page/blog through a Twitter link, I think, and have really enjoyed his Python Tricks emails. Some of them aren't news to me, but there have been multiple instances where they've given me a key insight into the behavior of Python, or an idea that's helped me improve my projects.As he notes in the Introduction, this book grew out of the Python Tricks emails, and it really shows. Dan has a knack for constructing code snippets that illustrate Python concepts in very few lines, and also for writing extremely clear descriptions of why they behave as they do. Further, even though Dan has years of Python experience, it seems clear to me he hasn't lost the sense of the ways in which Python can be confusing to new learners. I've only sampled here and there from his Buffet at this point, but have already gained two new concrete pieces of knowledge: bytearrays are mutable whereas bytes are not; and all it takes to create an abstract base class is to use metaclass=ABCMeta and decorate as needed with @abstractmethod. Even though I'd looked at the Python documentation for both of these before, I never quite understood either of them. But, Dan's phrasing and presentation made them crystal clear on my first read.One additional thing I like about the book is how Dan has included bits and pieces of his philosophy on Python, programming, writing good code, etc. Some people might be turned off by the editorializing, I suppose, but I really appreciate that the book provides these sorts of "meta" perspectives.All in all, an excellent resource for someone with modest to moderate Python experience looking to round out their knowledge of some of the more subtle features/behaviors of the language.

I am not a big fan of reading books in general. But, I just finished reading through every chapters in this book after 13 days of daily reading. I found this book both very fun and informative. If you are looking for something more than beginner python tutorials, this book will surely do a good job to satisfy some of the thirst that you had. Here are some Pros/Cons of the book.Pros:1. Good book material quality and size (small but also perfect thickness to carry around).2. Great and interesting topics with intermediate+ level examples.3. Concepts were very well described.Cons:1. Books lacks colors, It seems like HTMl version of this must have used some Markdown but the book is just plain black/white texts.2. Wish there were some more examples per topics.3. Chapters/Topics are short enough that *key takeaways* section can seem bit redundant. Maybe some kind of *quiz* or some kind of *small mission for readers to go find out* type of section would been more useful IMO.But, I really enjoyed this book. So how about you give it a try as well?

The main reason why I bought the book is because I like Dan's blog.I consider my Python level to be intermediate. I have completed reading 100 pages(1/3 of the book). Although the content is decent, this feels like it is targeted more towards beginner(not an absolute beginner) than intermediate level. I am hardly learning anything new that is already not in Fluent Python (which is a big ass book in comparison but provides better understanding of the Pythonic tricks) or in Raymond Hettinger or David Beazley’s videos on YouTube.I will update the review once I finish reading the entire book.Update: I finished reading the book and I still stand by what I said earlier. If you have time and patience, go with Fluent python. Other than the new style string formatting, rest of the content is mostly covered in that.That does not mean this is not a good book. I really loved some of the chapters like generators, iterators. The examples were more simple and easy to understand. Overall, I found this book to be more of a tutorial than a reference material. Mainly because I use the excellent pymotw website for the Collections part of the book.

I'm new to Python. This book clarified some fuzzy concepts, and it introduced me to several new concepts.Dan truly wants to help you become more proficient with Python. Several times throughout the book, he uses phrases such as "Think of it this way …" or "Another way to look at this is …". At the end of each chapter, he summarizes the "Key Takeaways".Dan recommends "Best Practices". He mentions specific ways of doing things that (although not required) are the way that the Python community expects them to be done.I'm sure I'll be referring back to this book as I progress as a Python programmer.

I am a prior IBM employee & retiree. I coded in Fortran, 360 assembler, Cobal, RPG2 for S/3 and AS400 level systems, Visual Basic, C, C++, VBA for Access, Excel, Word, etc. I was always a "part time" programmer in a consulting role. I decided to tackle, or be tackled by, Python in my retirement. I know I am not saying anything that is unknown by stating Python is NOT an easy learn. But, I can also say that I am definitely enjoying the challenge. This book is my favorite of the many quality instruction offerings provided by Real Python. I know I will be re-reading this book many times over. Great job !