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Appendix: History Lesson

I first started with Python when I needed to write an installer for software I had written called 'Diamond' so that I could make the installation easy. I had to choose between Python and Perl bindings for the Qt library. I did some research on the web and I came across an article by Eric S. Raymond, a famous and respected hacker, where he talked about how Python had become his favorite programming language. I also found out that the PyQt bindings were more mature compared to Perl-Qt. So, I decided that Python was the language for me.

Then, I started searching for a good book on Python. I couldn’t find any! I did find some O’Reilly books but they were either too expensive or were more like a reference manual than a guide. So, I settled for the documentation that came with Python. However, it was too brief and small. It did give a good idea about Python but was not complete. I managed with it since I had previous programming experience, but it was unsuitable for newbies.

About six months after my first brush with Python, I installed the (then) latest Red Hat 9.0 Linux and I was playing around with KWord. I got excited about it and suddenly got the idea of writing some stuff on Python. I started writing a few pages but it quickly became 30 pages long. Then, I became serious about making it more useful in a book form. After a lot of rewrites, it has reached a stage where it has become a useful guide to learning the Python language. I consider this book to be my contribution and tribute to the open source community.

This book started out as my personal notes on Python and I still consider it in the same way, although I’ve taken a lot of effort to make it more palatable to others :)

In the true spirit of open source, I have received lots of constructive suggestions, criticisms and feedback from enthusiastic readers which has helped me improve this book a lot.

Status Of The Book

  • The book was last updated on 2025-01-22 and generated using AsciiDoctor 2.0.22.

  • Last major update of this book was in Mar-Apr 2014, converted to Asciidoc using Emacs 24 and adoc-mode.

  • In Dec 2008, the book was updated for the Python 3.0 release (one of the first books to do so). But now, I have converted the book back for Python 2 language because readers would often get confused between the default Python 2 installed on their systems vs. Python 3 which they had to separately install and all the tooling, esp. editors would assume Python 2 as well. I had a hard time justifying why I had to aggravate readers and make them go through all this when the fact is that they can learn either one and it would be just as useful. So, Python 2 it is.

The book needs the help of its readers such as yourselves to point out any parts of the book which are not good, not comprehensible or are simply wrong. Please {contact}[write to the main author] or the respective translators with your comments and suggestions.

Appendix: Revision History

  • 3.0

  • 2.1

  • 2.0

    • 20 Oct 2012

    • Rewritten in Pandoc format, thanks to my wife who did most of the conversion from the Mediawiki format

    • Simplifying text, removing non-essential sections such as nonlocal and metaclasses

  • 1.90

    • 04 Sep 2008 and still in progress

    • Revival after a gap of 3.5 years!

    • Rewriting for Python 3.0

    • Rewrite using MediaWiki (again)

  • 1.20

    • 13 Jan 2005

    • Complete rewrite using Quanta+ on Fedora Core 3 with lot of corrections and updates. Many new examples. Rewrote my DocBook setup from scratch.

  • 1.15

    • 28 Mar 2004

    • Minor revisions

  • 1.12

    • 16 Mar 2004

    • Additions and corrections

  • 1.10

    • 09 Mar 2004

    • More typo corrections, thanks to many enthusiastic and helpful readers.

  • 1.00

    • 08 Mar 2004

    • After tremendous feedback and suggestions from readers, I have made significant revisions to the content along with typo corrections.

  • 0.99

    • 22 Feb 2004

    • Added a new chapter on modules. Added details about variable number of arguments in functions.

  • 0.98

    • 16 Feb 2004

    • Wrote a Python script and CSS stylesheet to improve XHTML output, including a crude-yet-functional lexical analyzer for automatic VIM-like syntax highlighting of the program listings.

  • 0.97

    • 13 Feb 2004

    • Another completely rewritten draft, in DocBook XML (again). Book has improved a lot - it is more coherent and readable.

  • 0.93

    • 25 Jan 2004

    • Added IDLE talk and more Windows-specific stuff

  • 0.92

    • 05 Jan 2004

    • Changes to few examples.

  • 0.91

    • 30 Dec 2003

    • Corrected typos. Improvised many topics.

  • 0.90

    • 18 Dec 2003

    • Added 2 more chapters. OpenOffice format with revisions.

  • 0.60

    • 21 Nov 2003

    • Fully rewritten and expanded.

  • 0.20

    • 20 Nov 2003

    • Corrected some typos and errors.

  • 0.15

  • 0.10

    • 14 Nov 2003

    • Initial draft using KWord.