Why This Edition?

One consequence of the growing popularity of Python has been an influx of new users, programming styles, and applications, all of which have conspired to make parts of the first edition of this book prime for updates. Python itself has changed in smaller ways, but important extensions have simplified various aspects of Python development and merit new coverage.

Perhaps most relevant for this edition is that the Python "audience" has changed. Over the last five years, Python has transitioned from an emerging language of interest primarily to pioneers to a widely accepted tool used by programmers for day-to-day development tasks. This edition has been refocused for this new Python audience. You will find that it is now more of a nuts-and-bolts text, geared less toward introducing and popularizing the language than to showing how to apply it for realistically scaled programming tasks.

Because of the breadth of change, this edition is something of an entirely new book. To readers who enjoyed the first edition, I would like to express my gratitude, and I hope you will find the same spirit in this second edition. Although this is a major rewrite, I have tried to retain as much of the original book's material and flavor as possible (especially the jokes :-).

Since writing the first edition five years ago, I have also had the opportunity to teach Python classes in the U.S. and abroad, and some of the new examples reflect feedback garnered from these training sessions. The new application domain examples reflect common interests and queries of both myself and my students. Teaching Python to workers in the trenches, many of whom are now compelled to use Python on the job, also inspired a new level of practicality that you will notice in this edition's examples and topics.

Other new examples are simply the result of my having fun programming Python. Yes, fun; I firmly believe that one of Python's greatest intangible assets is its ability both to kindle the excitement of programming among newcomers, and to rekindle the excitement among those who have toiled for years with more demanding tools. As we will see in this edition, Python makes it incredibly easy to play with advanced but practical tools such as threads, sockets, GUIs, web sites, and OOP -- areas that can be both tedious and daunting in traditional compiled languages like C and C++.

Frankly, even after eight years as a bona fide Pythonista, I still find programming most enjoyable when it is done in Python. Python is a wildly productive language, and witnessing its application first-hand is an aesthetic delight. I hope this edition, as much as the first, will demonstrate how to reap Python's productivity benefits and communicate some of the satisfaction and excitement found in a rapid-development tool such as Python.