Hi guys! I am the author of this book. Thanks heyalexej for posting this here. If there is anything I can help you guys with then kindly let me know. :)
Brilliant. Every language should have a book like this. I'm already learning a lot of little details about features I've had some passing experience on. Only request I have (which I generally have for stuff like this), is for real life use cases. Example would be <i>args and </i>*kwargs being used in decorators. Where do you use it? What's a real life example of it being used? How does that compare to the in built decorator functionality of Python? Answering this type of question helps people understand the technique and theory in equal measures as opposed to more theory than technique.<p>Thanks again for this :).
Map and filter are looked down upon by some Python devs because they prefer list comprehensions. If you don't need the laziness (in Python 3 only), you probably shouldn't use them because some don't consider them idiomatic. See this for more information:<p><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/a/6407222/384700" rel="nofollow">http://stackoverflow.com/a/6407222/384700</a>
From related Reddit thread[0]:<p><i>Note: This is not related with that paid "intermediate Python" book in any way. I became aware of it today. I had been using this name internally for a couple of months. If the author of paid "Intermediate Python" has any issue with this I would be more than happy to change the name of my book because he definitely beated me to the finish line. :)</i><p>[0] <a href="http://redd.it/3hbb46" rel="nofollow">http://redd.it/3hbb46</a>
I love it, as a biologist I did a Python course some months ago, already I'm much more productive than I was in my Origin/Excel time. this books really clarifies many of those strange things (like kwargs etc). This is going straight into my favorites and I know I'll be using it often. Thanx!!!
I have put a link to a mailing list. If you want to tip me then kindly signup over there and I would let you know once I have a tip receiving system in place. I already run a reputed [Python Weekly Newsletter](<a href="http://newsletter.pythontips.com/" rel="nofollow">http://newsletter.pythontips.com/</a>) so you are in a good company (meaning I won't spam you).<p>Mailing list: <a href="http://eepurl.com/bwjcej" rel="nofollow">http://eepurl.com/bwjcej</a>
And if anyone wants to add / enhance this here you go:<p><a href="https://github.com/IntermediatePython/intermediatePython" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/IntermediatePython/intermediatePython</a>
<p><pre><code> from contextlib import contextmanager
</code></pre>
I love this feature, I never forget to close a connection. It can also be useful for monkey patching, or thread local variable based optimizations.
This looks great just from glancing over the table of contents. I picked up Python nearly a year ago and I am a pretty novice programmer at best. Over time I've learned stuff like decorators, lambas, args/kwargs and other stuff that you generally don't find in the "Intro to Python" books, but its all been through stumbling into the right place. Thanks for sharing, I may have something to read this week :)
Shit, what I need is "How to publish a package to PyPi in 3 easy steps."<p>I go around and round with the Python Packaging Authority's documentation.
I just skimmed through decorators. I don't use python too much and decorators always seemed a little bit black magic for me. Thanks for proving this wrong.
You guys can donate me if you want to by buying the donation version of Intermediate Python from [@gumroad](<a href="https://gumroad.com/l/intermediate_python" rel="nofollow">https://gumroad.com/l/intermediate_python</a>) :)<p>It is only for $10 but if you want to pay less then kindly let me know (pm) and I can give you a custom link.<p>Cheers!
Nice, I've shared it in my social networks.<p>As for a supposed "Advanced Python" edition, it would be great to compile at least a list of topics that could be interesting. Some have been already mentioned in this thread, like:<p><pre><code> - Metaclasses
- Packaging (for pypi)
</code></pre>
I'd add:<p><pre><code> - Must-have libraries
- Testing</code></pre>
I like it. Really good.<p>The only point, I might not consider lists being mutable nor global values vs values returned from a function intermediate topics. Those are beginner topics I think.. one would have a hard time using the language almost at all without understanding them. I would say the part about decorators and <i>kwargs </i>args is more intermediate level. Anyone who gets to that probably already understands global variables and the fact certain data structures are mutable.<p>But not abuse your work. The book is nice. I learned a couple of things.
I see that that the book has a section on usage of For-Else construct. Personally I found this construct to be confusing, and avoid its usage as one can achieve the same by setting a flag (say). Is this construct much used ?