Learning Python, 5/e

Get a comprehensive, in-depth introduction tothe core Python language with this hands-on book. Based on author Mark Lutz’spopular training course, this updated fifth edition will help you quickly writeefficient, high-quality code with Python. It’s an ideal way to begin, whetheryou’re new to programming or a professional developer versed in otherlanguages.

Complete with quizzes, exercises, and helpful illustrations, thiseasy-to-follow, self-paced tutorial gets you started with both Python 2.7 and3.3— the latest releases in the 3.X and 2.X lines—plus all other releases incommon use today. You’ll also learn some advanced language features thatrecently have become more common in Python code.

• Explore Python’s major built-in object types such as numbers, lists, and dictionaries
• Create and process objects with Python statements, and learn Python’s general syntax model
• Use functions to avoid code redundancy and package code for reuse
• Organize statements, functions, and other tools into larger components with modules
• Dive into classes: Python’s object-oriented programming tool for structuring code
• Write large programs with Python’s exception-handling model and development tools
• Learn advanced Python tools, including decorators, descriptors, metaclasses, and Unicode processing