The Hitchhiker's Guide to Python: Best Practices for Development

There must be a thousand books, tutorials, and videos intended to teach the Python language. Most begin with a simple 'Hello World' program and progress through explanations of the Python language.As you learn enough to begin to use Python in your own applications, you must choose your own development environment. Authors Reitz and Schlusser identify components and discuss choices.Topics covered include choosing a language version, installing Python, choosing an editor or IDE, structuring your project, documentation tools, packaging and publishing the code. Coverage of the alternatives is broad and deep enough to allow comparisons. Capabilities and limitations are clearly identified.Whether your use will be scientific computing, web scraping, machine learning, or business applications, this book will help you choose and install an appropriate development environment comprised of compatible components.

This is an outstanding book. It doesn't try to teach you Python---it assumes you're already familiar with it---but puts together a lot of information on how, when, and where to use Python, with what complementary tools, in what different contexts. Running efficiency, coding efficiency, portability, interfacing to other programs. Choices of editor and/or Integrating Development Environment. Platform-dependent issues. Debugging. Packaging and distributing. Documenting. You name it. I learned a lot of things, especially things I didn't even know I didn't know---and found very useful to know. There are excellent links to all the resources mentioned. If you like to write programs that go out into the world and present themselves in a professional way BECAUSE they are professonally conceived and implemented, you'll want to have this book.

I bought this hoping it would be a quick desktop reference. I've found it useful for looking up all those little details and other things that you almost remember but use infrequently. In addition it's a decent catalog of best practices for making code more "pythonic".My only complaint is that some of the information is a bit dated, and the book could use a refresh. Don't know if another edition is in the works, but if it is that would be the one to get.

This book is for more advanced users than I expected, having seen excerpts on various websites. That's not necessarily a bad thing, just be warned that anyone in the beginner category will find much of it tough sledding. It's also written by multiple people. Some are good teachers and some are not, giving the book an uneven, schizophrenic feel. Overall, it's like I printed out several day's worth of successful and unsuccessful Python searches and bound then together. I regret the purchase. I should know better than to pick up hitchhikers!

This book gives a lot of insights on what's outside the common Python tutorial books, is pretty straightforward. I recommend it both to new learners and already learners, but if you're new to python support yourself with tutorials on the language itself

I've used a lot of different languages over the years. This book was sort of perfect for me. It's not about how to program, it's about Python as a language and the things that you ought to know about it.

I am coming at this from a DevOps/Release Engineering perspective. The author clearly laid out the best practices in structure and full development cycle arc.

Enjoying this book so far. I'm a web programmer/developer that uses Python as my back-end programming language, and this book is right up my alley. Covers lots of cool topics. The only real issue is that in surveying topics, you lose depth.

Very good and very useful book. If you are a student, this one worth it.

Nice book

J'ai pu trouver dans ce livre une bonne mise à niveau dans la pratique de python. N'étant pas développeur il me manquait certaines règles d'algorithmie pythonesque dispensées par ce livre. Je le recommande vivement.

This guide is a wonderful, tastefully pragmatic guide to getting things done with Python. It has proven invaluable in my journey with the language, both personally and professionally. It is a approachable and useful to developers at any level, and I never hesitate to recommend it to my friends and coworkers.I'm a fan of Kenneth and his work, be it his photography, writings, or software. I have used Requests in production, and have followed his blog for many years. Forever insightful and helpful, it is great to finally have the guide on my Kindle for quick reference!

A good breakdown of pythonesque coding styles, and a good read.