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I am trying to write a Python book

Once up­on a time, I tried to write a book. It did not end well. I was try­ing to dump a whole lot of knowl­edge at once. Knowl­edge I did not re­al­ly have, to be hon­est. When I look at that book I see a failed thing.

So, of course, many years lat­er, I am try­ing again, but with the lessons learned in my mind.

  • It will be a smal­l­­er book.

  • I am not al­­so writ­ing a whole tool chain for it.

  • It will be about things I know.

So, what is it?

The tem­po­rary ti­tle, right now, is some­thing like "Box­es: your sec­ond Python book". It says your sec­ond Python book be­cause you do need a work­ing knowl­edge of Python syn­tax as pro­vid­ed by the of­fi­cial Python Tu­to­ri­al, but not much else. When there is a par­tic­u­lar­ly hairy piece of code it may link to the tu­to­ri­al or the ref­er­ence or some­thing.

The "idea" of the book is to bridge a gap that ex­ists be­tween know­ing the ba­sics of read­ing and writ­ing a lan­guage (spe­cial­ly if it's your first!) and be­ing able to ef­fec­tive­ly us­ing it to cre­ate a use­ful projec­t.

It fol­lows the growth of "Box­es", a sim­plis­tic text lay­out en­gine, from a vague idea to a ful­ly work­ing, use­ful, test­ed, and pub­lished piece of soft­ware.

It's not there yet, but it's about 25% of the way there.

You can read it here: http­s://ralsi­na.git­lab.io/box­es-­book/ and the sources are at http­s://git­lab.­com/ralsi­na/box­es-­book

Com­ments much ap­pre­ci­at­ed!

Paul Wood / 2018-04-01 05:52:

Hi Roberto,
Your upcoming book looks very interesting. I think I just about fit into your target audience: I'm getting familiar with the basics of Python but am having difficulties translating this initial theoretical knowledge into working projects. I'm one of those people lacking the imagination to extrapolate from "Class Dog has 4 legs" to something that I can use in an actual program :)
I found the didactic approach refreshing and stimulating. I look forward to seeing how it progresses.

Roberto Alsina / 2018-04-02 00:42:

Cool :-)

I have the beginning of part 2 in place, although I have spent the last couple of days tweaking tools (and rewriting a couple of them)


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