I've Read Over 100 Books on Python. Here are the Top 3

I've read over a hundred books on python I mean not all at once and that would be ridiculous but over the course of years I've read at least a 100 books on Python and I want to share my three favorites with you so these are some of the books that I've read I don't know you might recognize a few of those but before I share with you my three favorites there's something else that I want to tell you that I think is even more important than the three books that I'm about to recommend so here it is oh uh I can't actually find the thing I want to show you in order to demonstrate this so I'm going to have to go and get one just bear with me while I do [Music] that do you want to see what's in the bag let's have a look yes it's a dictionary but how is an English dictionary relevant to learning python well I'm coming to that so imagine if you wanted to learn English and I said what you need to do is get yourself a nice big dictionary like this one that has loads of vocab and there's a section on grammar too I did not know that do you know what the collective noun for Apes is it's a shrewdness of Apes learn all the vocab learn all the grammar and then you'll know English that would be terrible advice it's also terrible advice for learning python which is why you have to choose your first book carefully instead you learn a little bit of vocab a little bit of grammar and then you practice you practice speaking and writing and at first your facility with the language is nowhere near enough to be able to communicate the complexity of your thoughts so you learn a bit more vocab a bit more grammar and it becomes an iterative process until you can communicate exactly what it is that you want to say and eventually if you're lucky your ability with language develops to the point where it helps you come up with original thoughts and ideas and it's exactly the same when learning p python which is why as a beginner there are certain books you should avoid so as well as giving you three book recommendations I want to show you how to recognize what makes a good book for a beginner let's start by looking at a book that's bad for beginners this book isn't very good for beginners there's too much vocab too much grammar it's overwhelming and it's more likely to put you off that's not to say that it's a bad book it's just not well suited to someone that's new to programming and new to python what you want is something gives you enough of the basics the vocab and the grammar to get you started on projects as quickly as possible which is why I like this book what I like about python crash course is that it's split into two parts Part One teaches you the foundations it teaches them thoroughly but it doesn't linger too long on them and part two takes what you've learned and uses it to create projects part one is that thick that's all the python you need to know in order to be able to work on the projects so you learn the foundations of python in a few pages and then you start doing interesting things in part two which is where all the projects are and the first project you do is a game and um it's pretty good actually it's Space Invaders so you'll be building something like that you'll also build an interactive data visualization learn how to work with apis and build a web app using Django it'll introduce you to git and GitHub and and give you advice on text editors and idees so you spend a lot of time learning how to apply what you've learned in part one to building projects which is the whole point of coding in the first place this really is an absolutely excellent book for beginners and it's my first recommendation book two becomes a little bit more difficult because Learners needs diverge I don't know why you want to Learn Python maybe you want to do data analysis maybe you want to develop web apps and that would influence the choice of the SE second book but this second book I think would be useful for everyone whether you want to Learn Python to do data analysis or whether you want to do web apps or whether you want to go into computer science you should have an understanding of at least the basics of computer science because that will be very useful to you when you're trying to problem solve further down the line and that's why I would recommend this book Python Programming by John zel gives a very thorough introdu uction to the basics of computer science it will help to ensure that you don't develop any really bad habits as you teach yourself to code in Python and it will help you to understand why things should be done in a particular way and as you work through it you'll develop your algorithmic thinking and problem solving skills and I think that's an essential step for anyone that's teaching themselves and the way I would approach this book especially if you've already started with python crash course is go to the end of each chapter and attempt the exercises and when you get stuck go to the section in the chapter that explains that question or helps to explain that question go through every chapter that way and you will get an overview and a foundation of computer science that I think will stand you in very good stead this book actually is a very old version it even talks about python 1 in here somewhere there's a much newer Edition the choice for book three is well it's trickier still because it really will now depend on where your interests lie so what I'm going to do is I'm going to recommend more than one book but I'm not suggesting you get them all just choose the book depending on what it is that you want to use Python for so if you want to carry on in the same vein as this book with exploring computer science a bit further I would suggest this it's called classic computer science problems in Python and it's the sort of things that you might get in a technical interview search algorithms that kind of thing and if you're interested in computer science I really think you'll like this book there is another one as well if you want to go down the algorithm route and explore those algorithms illuminated this is an excellent introductory book on algorithms it's not actually in Python it uses pseudo code to explain the algorithms maybe you want to use Python for data analysis and if that's the case then there really are lots of books to choose from in fact the choice is so great that it can be paralyzing but I'm going to give you three options for this that won't disappoint so the first two that give a sort of broad overview of data science or to use Python for data analysis are these two learning scientific programming with python now I know this says that it's covering scientific programming but actually what is covered in here are all the tools that you would need in order to be able to use Python for data analysis so that's a really good sort of broad book on the subject and then there's this one python tools for scientists which is quite similar really it covers all of the tools that you would need uh for science but also for doing data analysis and uh I really like these two books although they don't say data analysis or data science in the title they're actually very good for learning the skills that you need to do that however if it's just pandas that you want to learn then the best book on pandas that I have seen is this one effective pandas this will teach you how to do pretty much anything you can imagine in pandas it is a superb pandas book in fact this is the first edition I think there is now a second edition so check that before you get it but if it's pandas that you want to learn and you're not interested in learning the other aspects of data analysis then you don't need to think twice about it this is the book to get oh yeah one last thing it's always a good idea if you can borrow the book from a library first so that you can get a feel for whether or not it's right for you did you know that Interactive Learning can be up to six times more effective than traditional methods that's why I use brilliant.org the sponsor of this video whether you're puzzled by data science need to refresh your linear algebra skills or are curious about cuttingedge topics like Quantum Computing and neural networks brilliant has a course for you you what sets brilliant apart for me is how engaging and straightforward their learning process is every course is filled with interactive content and follow-up questions making learning not just informative but also incredibly fun you're not just passively absorbing information you're actively solving problems and building your skills step by step one of the things I like most about Brilliance courses is their thoughtful and skillful design they're structured to gradually build up your knowledge ensuring a solid understanding of each concept before moving on to the next it's learning at its finest designed to fit into your busy schedule with brilliant you can learn anytime anywhere whether you're on a 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Channel: Python Programmer

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Length: 9min 26sec (566 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 31 2024