Humble Book Bundle: Python Programming by No Starch Press
Just saw about Python Humble bundle [1]. Al Sweigart, author of some of the books in the bundle, put up a post on reddit [2] adding details about the books in the bundle. Python Software Foundation gets benefited from this bundle.
[1] https://www.humblebundle.com/books/python-programming-no-starch-books
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/csl01v/humble_book_bundle_python_programming_by_no/
"Automate the Boring Stuff with Python" and a couple of other books from the bundle are available for free at the author's website:
https://automatetheboringstuff.com/
This is the first time I've gotten anything from HB. The timing is good because my Python is self-taught and has many gaps that I want to fill.
Checkout was a little strange. CAPTCHA issues twice, then Stripe said my payment method was "no longer available," whatever that means. Finally it all went through when I chose the Apple Card. So strange. But at least I'll learn some python today!
Normally, I don't like upvoting an ad, but this one is exceptional.
Along with Pragprog, No Starch Press is my favorite tech book publisher. Getting their books for less than $1 each is a ridiculously good value.
Are all their books really that good though? The Rust book is excellent (I ended up buying a paper edition) but a the few others I skimmed a few years ago were extremely average (some of them are included in the bundle).
If you're into security books there's no better publisher than No Starch.
For programming books, they do lean heavily towards beginners, but you can say that about every publisher. No Starch has a higher percentage of above average and even excellent books than any other publisher I'm aware of. Some are mediocre, but for most publishers 90% of what they put out is mediocre.
They have a few great books on low-level programming IMO. They are introductions to that topic but they are topics that I wouldn't consider introductory.
Learn you a Haskell and Clojure for the Brave and True are both No Starch. They just don't have the typical No Starch cover.
Part of why I wanted to work with No Starch on TRPL was that I enjoyed several of their other books. I can’t vouch for all of them, of course, but they’re generally high quality. And they’re good to authors too; that matters to me, and not just as an author.
Yeah I've found them to be of mixed quality. Mainly they're just high-level overviews, which I guess is fine as a primer (and for the price!)
It seems like they've offered this same bundle a couple of times now. I bought it years ago, and one or two books may be different but I've seen a roughly similar bundle a number of times.
I buy a lot of books from HB but most of the programming ones have been mediocre, worse than a free article. Maybe this one might be good.
No Starch and O'Reilly have been consistently good, in my experience.
Wow, thank you. I just snagged it