"Learning Python by Mark Lutz" - Reading Journal 1 [Intro and Chapter 1]

Like me, if you are new to Python and want to ramp-up to become no non-sense developer in Python, you might want to read these posts. The post like this is my experience - the journey that is little longer but interesting, thought-provoking and rewarding.

For next several months, I would be posting my experiences with Python more specifically the learning I am going to have from the book - "Learning Python by Mark Lutz". My first impression after reading the table of contents is very promising. It looks to me that it is one of the books that provide complete coverage of Python and exhaustive too. I am eager and yet at the same time little afraid because I never learned any programming language reading a book completely. Since it is massive in size containing 1500+ pages, I feel it is going to test my consistency. And that is one of the reasons why I want to write my reading journal.

The rest of the post contains what I learned from the chapter 1 (Initially I thought I would write journal of first three chapters. But I could not do it due to merits and the amount of content in this chapter)

Chapter 1: A Python Q & A Session
The book starts with a bang providing enough material and motivation as to why someone should invest time learning Python and reading/working-out this book. This chapter provides an introduction to Python in the form of question and answer. These are kind of questions that were eating my mind and wanting an answer because the websites or courses talk only on the language but this book seems to address the gap as to "why". I also feel that the author has set up an important tone - question everything when you learn. You will find answers to the following questions

1. Why people use Python?
2. Is Python scripting language?
3. Is there any downside of Python?
4. Who uses Python?
5. What can I do with Python
6. How is Python developed and supported?
7. What are its technical strengths?
8. How Python stacks up to other languages?

This chapter gives deeper insights with solid reasonings and you will understand what you will get by learning Python and what is the amount of knowledge that you will get by reading this book - "Learning Python by Mark Lutz"

Needless to say, I am all excited to continue to learn Python :-)