Python Books

Another one of the best books for Python beginners is Barry’s accessible guide, a visually engaging introduction to Python full of hands-on instruction meant to get you up and running working with Python.

Head First Python begins with an overview of Python basics such as data structures, functions, modules, the Python data model, and experimenting at the Python shell. You’ll eventually move onto learning more advanced materials, including database management, exception handling, data wrangling, SQL, the Google App Engine, and more.

One of the reasons Python has become so widely used is that it can help you work more efficiently by automating the most tedious parts of your job. Rather than wasting hours manually updating spreadsheet cells, you can write Python programs to automate tasks and take care of your time-consuming work chores in mere minutes.

Sweigart’s bestselling book offers step-by-step instructions to create a Python program to accomplish a variety of otherwise mind-numbing tasks, with practice projects to improve your programs and put what you’ve learned to the test.

A classic Python training manual now in its fifth edition, Learning Python is a comprehensive, self-paced tutorial book that is a good place to start if you’re new to Python. It also covers general programming concepts like exception handling and development tools.

Filled with helpful visual aids, interactive exercises, and quizzes at the end of each chapter, Lutz’s book covers everything you need to know about programming with Python, including operators, statements, syntax, module, functions, data types, functions, system administration, databases, networking, and more.

For those who learn best from a project-based approach, Shaw’s classic book features more than 50 carefully crafted exercises that are geared toward people with no coding experience. Why is it the “hard way”? Because Shaw’s book encourages you to type all the code yourself and develop your own solutions for any problems you come across.

With clear and concise code examples and challenges that gradually progress in difficulty, Learn Python 3 the Hard Way was also published alongside a DVD with more than five hours of Python instruction.

If you’re looking for a book that will cover beginner-level programming topics before eventually progressing into slightly more challenging material, Think Python could be a good choice. The hands-on book doesn’t rush through Python basics, with lessons on syntax, semantics, and a variety of introductory programming concepts such as values, variables, statements, functions, and data structures.

But Downey’s book also has something to offer Developers with some Python experience. For instance, few beginner-level Python books would tackle some of the topics covered here, like polymorphism, algorithm analysis or operator overloading. And the latest version of Think Python adds coverage of powerful Python features including list comprehensions and additional data structures.

If you’re looking to develop your machine learning and data science skills, this book provides a practical and accessible introduction to using Python to build your own machine learning solutions and algorithms (in other words, you won’t need to understand the math that makes them work).

Introduction to Machine Learning with Python is intended to be somewhat beginner-friendly, exploring the foundational ideas and applications of machine learning before helping readers learn the essential steps to create a successful machine-learning application with Python and the scikit-learn library. That said, this book is likely most appropriate for readers who consider themselves somewhat experienced with Python, as familiarity with Python’s NumPy and matplotlib libraries will help you get more out of the text.

One of the biggest reasons for Python’s popularity is the simplicity of its syntax, which makes it arguably the most beginner-friendly programming language. But once you have gained some experience working with Python, you will want to dig into the more complex corners of the language to discover how to write more effective, efficient code. Ramalho’s popular book is a great starting point to discover the power of idiomatic Python code and ultimately make your code more readable, shorter, and faster.

An appealing feature of Fluent Python is that it focuses on language features that are unique to Python and not found in most other programming languages. It should be noted that Ramalho’s book certainly is for more advanced Python programmers and does not attempt to give even a brief introduction to basic Python concepts.

Perhaps the most advanced Python book on this list, Python Cookbook is intended for advanced Python Developers who want to gain a deeper understanding of modern programming idioms and some of the advanced techniques used by Python libraries, frameworks, and applications. The book’s “recipes” are intended to help readers get started before doing further independent research to take them further.

If you are an experienced Python Developer who wants to focus on modern idioms, patterns, data structures, and tools, Python Cookbook features recipes for more than a dozen topics, including tasks common to a diverse variety of application domains. The recipes all feature extended code solutions, as well as several pages of analysis on why each solution works.

Python Cookbook also features illustrations of designs including accessor functions, decorator patterns, and more.

If you’re learning Python because you are looking for a new career in software engineering, web development, or data science, Elements of Programming Interviews in Python is a great resource. At its core, the book features more than 250 real-world computing problems — the kind you might see in a Python Developer job interview — with detailed solutions, along with illustrations of 200 figures, 300 tested programs, and 150 additional variants.

The coding challenges are presented in a series of chapters, each of which features an intro, a case study, tips, and information on the most important library methods. Even if you don’t anticipate needing to solve Python challenges as part of a job interview, working to solve the difficult coding problems included in the book will certainly build your skill with Python.

If you do have a professional focus and you want to become a Python Developer, the questions here are representative of what you could be asked in a job interview with a top software company. Further, Elements of Programming Interviews in Python also offers insight into some of the non-technical aspects of these job interviews, including common mistakes, advice on salary negotiation, and interview strategies.