Read Online A Smarter Way to Learn Python Learn it faster Remember it longer Mark Myers eBook

Product details File Size 2818 KB Print Length 238 pages Page Numbers Source ISBN 1974431479 Publication Date December 6, 2017 Sold by  Digital Services LLC Language English ASIN B077Z55G3B

A Smarter Way to Learn Python Learn it faster Remember it longer Mark Myers eBook Reviews

• I've been a long-time fan of Mr. Myers' books. Purchasing his first book on HTML and CSS was the begining of my web development journey. It sparked something inside of me and since then I have purchased all of his books (JavaScript, jQuery, and now his latest on Python). Every book comes with an awesome set of online exercises that really cements knowledge learned. With each book release the coding exercises have gotten cleaner and more elegant in my opinion.
  I recently purchased "A Smarter Way to Learn Python" and I am just flying through it. I got it a few hours ago and I'm already approaching chapter 20 )
  It's like with each book release the writing gets better, the examples more enjoyable–surprising because his first books are already amazing and well written, the coding exercises really encouraging, fun, and progressive–and with the exercises relating to Mark's newest release, I'm thoroughly enjoying myself to a point where I don't want to stop learning and practicing.
  I really wish all books dealing with a learned skill were like this.
  
  Just to sum up my story, around the summer of 2015, I was a total newbie at web development, struggling with HTML...HTML! I didn't know how to conjure up a simple website well at all. Didn't quite know how to properly use CSS either.
  I purchased his HTML & CSS book and quickly got sucked into it, soon after, I got his JavaScript book. I've Completed both of those and most of his jQuery one. I have found online learning sources as well and now I can develop using HTML, CSS, Sass, Bootstrap, JavaScript, TypeScript, jQuery, Angular, NodeJS, PHP, SQL, and I have learned how to apply Git to my projects as well. I've learned Regular Expressions and I'm delving into React, Vue, Express, MongoDB, Java and now Python, among other technologies.
  But it all started with Mark Myers first book. I am very grateful for his way of teaching that enables one to learn well with great efficiency.
  
  His Python book is just amazing, it keeps true to his "read a little, practice more" type of learning which really gets the information to stay with you.
  I already can't wait for his next book, I wonder what it will be )
• This book is probably best for kids or people with very little technological savvy that, for whatever reason, want to learn Python. As the author mentions, it's too elementary for anyone with coding knowledge. While I'm new to python and haven't done any coding for some time, I'm still familiar with the basic elements and structure of programming languages in general. For me the process for this material was three minutes of reading on one very simple topic, and then 12 repetitive exercises. But if I didn't think it might be useful for some subsection of humans interested in programming, I would have given less stars or probably not bothered to review it at all.
  
  In the end, this book is cheap and it covers the very basic elements of python. It also does NOT require you to setup python on your system, or mess with a text editor/IDE. All the exercises are done on the author's website where you type 1-4 lines of code into a text box to answer the first 10 questions. The last 2 exercises of each section have you type fully executable code into a web-embedded python interpreter, and then run it to see if it works. This has it's pros and cons, in my opinion. For someone with limited access to computers, or not much interest in more than a basic understanding of the language, it helps them start learning. For somebody that wants to move from this book into actually doing their own projects, it's not so great. You'll definitely have to do some additional reading.
  
  My other criticism is with regard to how the author sometimes dismiss details of the language that are actually important. In one of the class sections, he implies that he isn't quite sure what the class constructor (__init__()) is really meant to do, but that you just have to do it and do it a specific way. It was possibly meant to be humorous, but no further explanation followed and I found it off-putting. There were a couple of similar comments in the sections about handling files that seemed to be in the same vein of "you don't really need to understand why you're doing this, just do it." That attitude not only seemed to undermine the authority of the author ("Why am I learning from a person that doesn't fully understand this language?"), but also struck me as contrary to the reason I was reading the book.
• If you want to learn Python from the beginning and know when you get to the end you will have learned it and understand it by writing and reading code, get this book and follow the directions. What separates this book (and the other A Smarter Way books) from other learning books is short chapters with interactive exercises after every chapter reinforcing learning from previous chapters with actual code reading, writing, and evaluating. You won't actually build projects (that would be a good thing to include after every so many chapters to put it all together, but that would probably be scope creep for this book) but you will have the tools needed to write the code needed to make projects. As a former public school teacher turned professional software engineer, Mark's books provide the skills you will need to get started reading and writing Python code in a sequential, reinforcing manner that will spiral new ideas around the already obtained old ones to progress toward mastery quickly.
  
  TLDR Read a chapter, do the online exercises and you will be reading and writing Python code in no time with understanding.