What Books Should I Read? In What Order?

A fascinating question.

... I'm baffled by the amount of books you've published over the course of time. Currently Reddit suggests that I use Building Skills in Python under Beginner's section, but it looks quite outdated. So back and forth, I found your Building Skills in OO on GitHub Page and was quite happy with the read on the first 100 pages.

I searched for more info on the books you've published and wanted to know if you could sort them in ascending order of difficulty for me as I intend to purchase them slowly.

My main concern to learn Python is just to cross technical interviews and building applications that help with my workflow (they are in bash with around 200 functions, so I'm hoping to migrate them to something which is more robust). 

Currently the focus I intend to develop is on:

1) Strong Foundations of the Python Language.

2) Strong Foundations on the Basic Libraries for Data Structures and Algorithms (For example, bisect gives me insort(), calendar gives me isleap(), iter_tools gives me permutation(), etc).

3) Strong Foundations on the Design Patterns.

So could you please help me out and suggest your books?

This is challenging for a few reasons.

First, the "Building Skills" books have been reduced to only the Building Skills in OO Design. This can be found in GitHub. https://github.com/slott56/building-skills-oo-design-book.

That book is not really targeted to beginners, though. It presumes some core OO skills, and provides a (very) long series of exercises to build on those skills.

Second, I never really conceived of a beginner-to-expert sequence of books. From your letter, I see that I need to look at filling in some gaps in my sequence of books. I'll alert my editors at Packt, and we can consider this in the future.

Specific Needs

Let's look at your needs.

1. Foundations in the Python language.

This might be something you can learn from my Python Essentials. This isn't focused on complete n00bs. All of my books expect some programming background. Since you're an Android engineer and write code in C++ and Java, this may be helpful. This title is getting old, however, and needs a second edition.

For someone with core programming skills, I suspect that Mastering OO Python will be suitable. My Python 3 OO Programming (4th ed.) is similarly aimed at folks who can program and can learn a new language quickly.

A book like Martelli's Python in a Nutshell may provide a better foundation the way the language works than any of mine. Also Lutz's Learning Python is extremely popular.

2. Foundations in the Standard Library.

This is tricky. I touch on some of these topics in Functional Python Programming (2nd ed.) I also touch on some of these topics in the Modern Python Cookbook (2nd ed.)

I don't, however, cover very much of the library. I touch on a few really important modules. The library is vast. A book like Hellmann's The Python Standard Library by Example might be more suitable than one of mine.

3. Design Patterns.

This is central to Python 3 OO Programming (4th ed.) Dusty Phillips and I cover a number of popular design patterns in detail. 

There are -- of course -- a lot of very, very good books on Python. I'm honored you reached out to me.

Other Random Advice

Because Python is a relatively simple language (with a vast library) I have always suspected that language foundations don't really require a ton of explanation. Many languages (i.e., C++) are filled with odd details and weird features that are really unpleasantly complex. Many Java programmers get used to the distinction between the primitive int type and the Integer class type. While the Java and C++ approach can seem simple (after a while) it really isn't simple at all.

The standard library is vast, and it takes time to get used to how much is there. I would suggest having a browser tab open to https://docs.python.org/3/library/ at all times.

Design patterns, similarly, require some care. There are complex details around implementing the Singleton pattern in C++ and Java. Python class definitions and Python module definitions are Singletons, and using a class definition as a Singleton object is often far simpler than the commonly-used techniques for C++ and Java.