I sincerely hope that this version is better than the first edition, although anything short of a random re-arrangement of pages would serve as an improvement. The first edition actually delayed my initial use of Python by about a year and a half. I had heard wonderful things about the language so I figured, "Ah, an O'Reilly book!" Big mistake.
Endless bits about immutability, without hints as to why I ought to care. I can appreciate the use of the interactive prompt now, but to start with it seems... s
I have probably the previous edition of this book, and what you're describing sounds like a different book. Lamda expressions came after basic and intermediate functions - I had no problem with it. All he talked about was idiom - the "pythonic" way of doing things - while mentioning that a C programmer would probably have used a loop instead of a map expression, etc.
Better Than First Edition? (Score:5, Insightful)
I sincerely hope that this version is better than the first edition, although anything short of a random re-arrangement of pages would serve as an improvement. The first edition actually delayed my initial use of Python by about a year and a half. I had heard wonderful things about the language so I figured, "Ah, an O'Reilly book!" Big mistake.
Endless bits about immutability, without hints as to why I ought to care. I can appreciate the use of the interactive prompt now, but to start with it seems ... s
Re:Better Than First Edition? (Score:3, Informative)
I have probably the previous edition of this book, and what you're describing sounds like a different book. Lamda expressions came after basic and intermediate functions - I had no problem with it. All he talked about was idiom - the "pythonic" way of doing things - while mentioning that a C programmer would probably have used a loop instead of a map expression, etc.
So I'd say they fixed it up a bit.