Practices of the Python Pro - Book Review

The Book:

Practices of the Python Pro By Dane Hillard

Short Summary:

"Practices of the Python Pro" is a book to teach developers about better software practices. The title is a bit misleading because it suggests that the book is about writing better Python code; it's actually about good Software practices and uses Python as the medium. The book has three main parts and a fourth closing part. The first part is about why designing software matters - basically an argument for why someone needs to learn the material in the book. The second talks broadly about the concepts, and the third goes into detail. The book ends with suggestions to the reader about where to go next.

What I liked:

I thought the book was great. As I said, the title is a bit misleading, but the material is excellent. I liked the concepts the second part covers, including separation of concerns, abstraction, and encapsulation, designing for high performance (speed testing), and different types of testing (such as unit versus integration). The third part was also noteworthy- it talks about how to improve your code and gets into more specific problems.

What I disliked:

The one problem with the book is the title. It should be named "Best Software Development Practices with examples in Python."

The title should emphasize that it's more about software development and uses Python as its learning tool.

Review round-up:

The material is vital for Python developers, and even as an intermediate developer myself, it helped reinforce many other concepts I've learned elsewhere. I appreciate that it's not at all complex to understand. It's a book that was missing in the Python community. Many second/intermediate Python books give you particular use cases, but this book gives you a view above that and helps organize and think about your software as a whole. I can see myself re-reading this book in the future.

Rating:

9/10 Python Snakes