Reviews have begun to appear for VMware Cookbook, written by Ryan Troy with some assistance from me. The comments I am seeing have been positive.
Comments have appeared today from Meera Subbarao’s Java Blog, Learnxpress, and Amazon.com.
Month: November 2009
The Ubuntu Developer Summit ended last night and I’m on my way home. Ubuntu 10.04 LTS is going to be an incredible release and I’m proud to have participated a little bit in the process. I’ll be writing more about it as time passes. For now, enjoy the group photo (I’m in the second row, just behind the guy holding the right end of the Ubuntu banner. Click the photo to go to the Flickr page where it was uploaded and where you will find a larger version available.
I had one of my European colleagues say to me last night that he feels like he has picked up many aspects of the American accent while here in Dallas. I have spent a large amount of time with my British, Irish, Australian and other European friends and it seems I have picked up a few of their vocal mannerisms and accent quirks. That’s kind of how community works, isn’t it? We each give to and take from one another, ending up with a conglomeration that is mutually comprehensible and beneficial.
I am sitting at the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Dallas and I had a sudden realization. No one knows the “correct” way to pronounce “Ubuntu.” Everyone, community members, developers, Canonical employees, Mark Shuttleworth, Jono Bacon, we all pronounce it a little bit differently. I’ve heard eww-boon-too, eww-bun-too, yoo-boon-too, yoo-bun-too, oo-bun-too, oo-boon-too and a few more that I can’t figure out how to phoneticize.
I’m at the Ubuntu Developers’ Summit (UDS). I like how Popey introduces the event, so I won’t bother doing more in this post than linking to his blog, quoting a bit of his post, and then heading out of my hotel room to hang out with people. As with him, Canonical is also sponsoring my attendance.
My friends sometimes ask me what happens at UDS, so I thought I’d write a little summary each day of what’s happened. I’ll try to keep it fairly short, although I appear to have failed so far with this particular post.
Firstly I guess I should explain what UDS is to those who don’t know. Every 6 months the Ubuntu project puts out a new release. We just released Ubuntu 9.10 (code name Karmic Koala) and the next release is due in April next year. It’ll be called Ubuntu 10.04 (code name Lucid Lynx). UDS is the Ubuntu Developer Summit where a couple of hundred people get together and work on plans for what will be in the next release. Some of that is already known, but much of it gets blueprinted in this week.
There is a publicly accessible schedule outlining what specifications will be discussed where and when. There are separate colour coded ‘tracks’ to follow, and I’ll probably spend most of my time in the Community one although others do look interesting too. It’s always a tricky thing to pick and choose which sessions to go to, and so I always miss out on something. I’d rather it was that way than loads of sessions I’m not interested in though!
UDS-L (L for Lucid) takes place from 16th to 20th November 2009 at the Renaissance Hotel, Dallas, Texas. Canonical (who sponsor the Ubuntu project and organise the summit) kindly sponsored my attendance here in Dallas which includes flight, hotel accommodation and food.
Years ago I purchased a copy of the very first edition of Learning Python.It was a small book, about 350 pages, but in 1999 when it came out, it was one of the best introductions to the language that existed. I hadn’t picked up my copy for some time, but I remember well how useful it was when I first bought it. When O’Reilly offered me a free review copy of Learning Python, fourth edition, I figured the differences between the two editions would primarily consist of updates to the content based on the differences in Python release versions, and that I wouldn’t likely learn much more from the new edition. I was wrong, and I will explain how and why below.
This book is HUGE. It weighs in at over 1100 pages and is filled with clear explanations, interesting history, and the most useful description of the foundations of the Python programming language that I have seen. The material was developed by the author, Mark Lutz, over the last decade, during which he has taught hundreds of seminars introducing Python. Lutz compiled the new edition based on the materials taught in a three day training class, complete with quizzes and meaningful exercises. While Lutz was one of the two original authors of the first edition, he is now the sole author of the book and it is obvious that his extensive experience teaching seminars has refined his presentation of Python in ways that will benefit readers of this book. The understanding of student needs shows clearly in the text, which focuses on the core of the language.
Learning Python is based on the new 3.x series of the Python language, but points out the differences between it and the still-supported and sometimes incompatible earlier 2.6 edition, so whichever version of the language you are learning or require you will find the information you need to begin here. Some may ask why cover the old version when the new one has so many improvements, but the answer is simply that there is a lot of legacy code that is not going to be updated soon and so people will need to support that code, which is often incompatible with Python 3.x without some changes.
The book covers many topics, none of which seem unimportant or superfluous. While the page counts seems quite daunting, a closer examination shows there is no need to be intimidated. The page count does not add complexity or difficulty, but actually gives room for clearer and more complete descriptions and definitions alongside practice questions that students will find very useful. The topics include all of the obvious foundational needs starting with history, how to run programs and use some common editors. It moves to core data types and operations, spending several pages clearly defining and describing each and how they are used, before introducing statements and syntax on page 261. I like how the differences between 2.6 and 3.x are clearly shown, such as the change from a print statement in 2.6 to a print function in 3.x and how either is implemented and used as well as the reasoning behind the change. Functions are introduced and discussed, as are modules, classes, object oriented programming, exceptions, and several advanced topics. There are two appendices covering installation and configuration and giving the solutions to the exercises in the book
It has been a long time since I did any programming. My life took a different path. This book has reminded me of how fun it is to write and read code in Python and made me wonder how I might find or create opportunities to return programming to my busy life (but this time around, if I make the time to write anything, it will be in Python 3.x). This book is why.
Lutz has also authored O’Reilly’s Programming Python, which was explicitly designed to be a follow up text to this one, which I have read and which also sits on my bookshelf, but which I have not reviewed (I bought that one a couple years ago and at the time was not writing book reviews.–if there is interest, I’ll review it at a later time).
Disclosures: I bought the first edition, but was given this fourth edition free by O’Reilly as a review copy, I also write for O’Reilly.
I’ve been talking about this book for months. It has been over a year since Ryan Troy and I started the process of creating it. Finally, VMware Cookbook is available for purchase.
