Practical Python

Instant Python with Ten Instant Projects offers a highly practical, readable guide to the Python programming language. Following a succinct yet concise overview of the installation process, Hetland brings the reader up to speed regarding the general programming precepts common to every high-level language, including datatypes, conditionals and looping, and modularity. Notably, Hetland takes great care to provide a thorough introduction to Python's potentially confusing datatype offering, including arrays, dictionaries, lists, and tuples, employing numerous examples aimed towards familiarizing the reader with the sometimes subtle differences of each. Armed with the foundational knowledge, readers are then introduced to Python's file-handling, database, GUI, and string handling capabilities. Additionally, readers are treated to an excellent review of Python's object-oriented, functional, and exception-handling capabilities. All chapters are peppered with references to useful functions from Python's standard library.
Hetland devotes the second half of the book to project development with a series of ten increasingly complex applications. Project focus includes automated document conversion, newsgroup administration, graphical and PDF document generation, remote document maintenance, the creation and implementation of an XML RPC server, database integration, and Graphical User Interface (GUI) and game development.