Rating: 
Summary: Excellent for any beginner
Review: This book is simply excellent for any beginner. I had no coding experience whatsoever and I could still learn a lot from this book and do things like scientific computing and even beginning a software project.Of course, python is an easy language some would say. Nevertheless, I truly believe this is a must have for anyone who like me doesn't know about prgramming and wants to learn to use an easy language that could do a lot! Kudos for the creator of the language and the authors of this book. In no time, you will be ble to programm something useful.
Rating:
Summary: The best introductory programming book I've read!
Review: Excellent for beginning programmers. Very clear, light reading. Nice sense of humor. Even for advanced programmers (who are new to python), I recommend "Learning Python " instead of "Programming Python" because it is better organized and takes up less shelf space.
Rating: 
Summary: Fair introduction to Python for an experienced programmer
Review: First off I would like to make a distinction between the Python programming language and this particular introduction to it. Python is a great language and you will enjoy programming in it. This is probably the source of excitement in reviews on this page. Because the book, unfortunately, has a number of flaws. The tradition of O'Reilly Perl books has been not only to teach you the syntax of Perl, but also to introduce programming techniques and ideas how to make best use of the language features. This Python book scores zero on these points. It focuses on syntax exclusively and this makes it unsuitable for an absolute beginner. The examples are unimaginative. The authors show you how to write correct code for using "dictionaries", but not how to USE "dictionaries". A Perl book author would throw in a program that uses a "hash" to search for duplicate data entries (as they did). Besides, the flow of the book is uneven. Functions and classes are discussed at length, but built-in data types and exceptions are looked at only briefly. All this is really unfortunate because there are not very many Python books on the market and it is a very good language. Overall, I think, this book is best for experienced programmers who already know their CS, have to get up to speed with Python very quickly, have $30 to waste, and really love to own O'Reilly books. The rest might be better off by printing out the Python tutorial.
Rating:
Summary: Now you can make Java fun
Review: JPython is a JVM port of Python. It provides Java with generic capabilities similar to C++ templates and Ada generics, something I have been missing from the language itself [sure you can use intefaces, but they're not the same]. I knew very little about Python before reading this book, however I had read in Dr Dobbs about the potential of JPython for automating Java testing and decided to give the language a once over. I am very glad I did. A number of my fellow developers have started using JPython now and I know that it has been saving me a lot of time. Excellent reading, especially if your main interest is in picking up enough [realistic] knowledge about Python to use JPython effectively in simplifying many commonly tedious Java tasks [such as testing].
Rating:
Summary: Excellent (as long as you can already program)
Review: I already knew C++ (and a little of other languages), so this was not a problem for me, but the book does assume that you already understand most basic programming concepts (and if you don't understand Object-Oriented programming you might have a little trouble at first, though they do give a good explanation). Of course, I can't really tell that part, just my impression. If you can do something as trivial as VB, I guess you'll be fine. Other than that, this is an EXCELLENT book. I read though it in about 3 days, and it was very effective. For example, the day after I finished, I programmed a Python script for work that used COM, despite never having programmed anything in Windows before let alone used COM). It was that good. And it doesn't have an OS-bias (despite that little bit on COM), which is good and really fits the language.
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully organized; blows "Learning Perl" away
Review: This is a miraculously good book. The writing is crystal-clear and the examples are well-chosen. Best of all, the book's organization is just about perfect. I knew a smidgen of Python before starting this book, but "Learning Python" helped me understand and extend what I already knew. So much has clicked into place now. I'm amazed that anyone would prefer "Learning Perl" to this book. Perhaps that reader was holding a grudge about "Programming Python" -- admittedly, not the best book in the world. :-) While the first edition of "Learning Perl" was nicely written, the second edition was an absolute mess. Schwartz and Christiansen tried to shoehorn too much new information into the old chapter organization, and the result was a nasty tangled mass of a book. I wouldn't wish "Learning Perl" on anybody. Those Perl guys have a lot to learn from "Learning Python". Want to learn a programming language? Start with "Learning Python"!
Rating: 
Summary: Learning Python?
Review: I purchased the Mark Lutz's first book, Programming Python, and found it impossible to comprehend. So then I heard about a new book called learning Python, which was more of a tutorial-style book. I bought it immediately, eager to learn the language which I have heard so much about, and to my dissapointment, it seemed to be the same as Programming Python, only shorter. If you really want to learn a programming language, get Learning Perl by Randal Schwartz and Tom Christiansen. Good luck!
Rating:
Summary: is to Python what the Llama book is to Perl
Review: An excellent tutorial to get started in doing Python work. The sections are nicely ordered along with plenty of handy reference tables and explanations. Not only will this book tell you *what* to do, but *why* you're doing it - unlike so many other so-called tutorials. After getting this book, I was getting Real Work done in Python in a matter of hours.
Rating:
Summary: Best introductory book I have read to any computer language.
Review: I was recently introduced to Python by the second author, David Ascher (who works at the same Institute as I do). I am really impressed by the power of Python and by the exceptional quality of the reference guides and this book in particular. As a former Professor of Computer Science at Harvard, I wish that all computer science books were written with this amount of clarity and humour. Everybody in my research lab is now learning Python from this book and my chief programmer is even more enthusiastic about it than I am. It has enabled him to write some image processing software in a few weeks that would have required months in other languages (and he knew nothing about Python two months ago). For myself, it has encouraged me to start programming again after a gap of many years. In summary, the Python language is extremely useful for image processing (and many other applications) and this book makes it very easy and enjoyable to learn.
Rating:
Summary: Lutz & Ascher Do Python Justice
Review: I can't get over how damn good these guys are. I've been toying with Python for almost a year, and been a heavy user since this past fall. It's been a godsend for both heinous class projects (go NumPy!) and side tinkerings of my own. The standard documentation is pretty good, and Lutz's Programming Python book (own that too) is also superb. I bought this new book sight unseen because I knew what to expect...and this book did not disappoint! I feel like buying this book for friends just to introduce them to the language. It's current, it's well written, and it is a wonderfully crafted introduction to Python. It's useful even to people who know the language already...it works well for me as a reference for those various things I forget here and there (to supplement Lutz's Python Pocket Reference -- another must have). Both of these authors have much to be proud of...thanks for this great addition to the Python world!
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