The Self-Taught Programmer: The Definitive Guide to Programming Professionally by Cory Althoff (PDF)

Description

I am a self-taught programmer. After a year of self-study, I learned to program well enough to land a job as a software engineer II at eBay. Once I got there, I realized I was severely under-prepared. I was overwhelmed by the amount of things I needed to know but hadn’t learned yet. My journey learning to program, and my experience at my first job as a software engineer were the inspiration for this book.This book is not just about learning to program; although you will learn to code. If you want to program professionally, it is not enough to learn to code; that is why, in addition to helping you learn to program, I also cover the rest of the things you need to know to program professionally that classes and books don’t teach you. “The Self-taught Programmer” is a roadmap, a guide to take you from writing your first Python program, to passing your first technical interview. I divided the book into five sections:1. Learn to program in Python 3 and build your first program.2. Learn Object-oriented programming and create a powerful Python program to get you hooked.3. Learn to use tools like Git, Bash, and regular expressions. Then use your new coding skills to build a web scraper.4. Study Computer Science fundamentals like data structures and algorithms.5. Finish with best coding practices, tips for working with a team, and advice on landing a programming job.You CAN learn to program professionally. The path is there. Will you take it?

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Good book. Moves a little fast at the beginning hosing you with vocabulary and concepts but there’s probably only so much that can be done with that. The book hasn’t been updated recently however, which is more problematic in my mind. There are minor differences in the examples given and what the most recent version of Python will do. So far nothing major but given how rapidly the coding world evolves, it surprised me that the author is letting it slowly fall into obsolescence.EDIT: The more I move through the book, the more irritated I get by the occasional sloppy formatting, because you have to spend time deciphering if certain punctuation is part of the code example or added simply for grammatical purposes. Difficult to explain here but IYKYK.Also, I’m finding that the author sometimes seems to cheat on practice exercises. He’ll give a prompt for you to accomplish some task (presumably answerable from the information provided in the chapter). You’ll work for ages on a solution, and in giving up and looking for how he solved it, he’ll use some end-run solution using other means.For example, in Chapter 6, he’ll say “take the list [“the”, “fox”, “jumped”, “over”, “the”, “fence”, “.”] and turn it into a grammatically correct string with spaces between all the words but no space between the word ‘fox’ and the period.”Great, alright…[work for 20 minutes]. Go to the solution, and the dude prints all the words up through “fence”, and just drops the period, and then tacks it back on at the end. That’s not turning the list into a sentence like the prompt said, it’s just chopping parts out of it and then re-adding elements back in to technically get the same result. Very aggravating.Here is his solution to the exercise above (from Ch. 6-it’s Python). The sleight of hand happens at line 3:1. fox = [“The”, “fox”, “jumped”, “over”, “the”, “fence”, “.”]2. fox = ” “.join(fox)3. fox = fox[0: -2] + “.”4. print(fox)He does that kind of thing more than occasionally. Now it could be that I’m being unreasonable in what I’m expecting. Maybe there is a more direct way to do that, and it’s just too early on to have learned that. Maybe he’s trying to encourage creative problem solving. But I don’t want to learn how to code with duct tape that *technically* functions but is trash code, I want to learn how to code.[/rant/

⭐If you can see beyond the many typos, the content is very productive.

⭐the book is well written by somebody who is familiar with the subject

⭐Have bought his other book as well. Started my first scripting class with python and this helps out a lot

⭐This book isn’t quite what I thought it was. There are lots of free resources and free online versions of many IT books, including for Python. I thought this one would be about the “other” things you need to know as a programmer that you might have missed in not getting a degree. But no, this is “just” another book about how to program in Python. BUT, it is a good one. Is this one worth the $5 on Kindle? Perhaps. Finding a book that doesn’t progress too quickly for the beginner is not easy. Finding a book with good exercises isn’t easy either. I’ve read a bunch because it’s taking me a while to get a grasp on Python. I just finished Chapter 4 and so far am really liking this book. I bought the Kindle version which has been more than adequate. In fact, I’ve done most of the reading on the go on my phone, then when I get home I work through the exercises at the end of the chapters. The set of exercises at the end of each chapter start easy, then the next exercise gets a little more involved, then a little more involved, till you have practiced the main ideas in that chapter. I really like this. If I run into a difficulty, I know exactly where to look for the answer, because only one new concept per exercise was called for. From the courses I’ve done on Coursera and EdX, and a couple online Python books, I’d say I like these exercises the best. I just wish there were more of them. I’m not sure it gives answers to the questions, since I haven’t seen any, but I haven’t needed any. I haven’t had any problems with the Kindle version. Each example has a link to a webpage that includes the example. This is useful, because the example lines sometimes are longer than the Kindle can display, so you can’t see the end of the line.Overall, I wouldn’t really expect much more than the other Python books out there offer, but I think the manner of his presentation might be a bit more “down to earth” for the beginner. If you are having trouble following a lot of the books and courses on Python, I’d recommend that you press on and read more books and take more courses and don’t let yourself get stuck on the bits that seem hard right now. It all slowly starts making sense as you go on, things get cemented in your memory, and the different approaches to explaining things start helping you to fill in your gaps.I wouldn’t say this is the best book out there, but I think it might be one of the better beginner’s books. I also wouldn’t say this tells you much more about programming in general than the other beginning books out there. Take a look for free IT books on the web and you’ll find a lot, though when you find one you love, you might want to buy it to have it on hand and to support the author. So, I have mixed feelings about this one based on what it seemed to present itself as, but for what it is, it’s pretty good.

⭐I program in Java and I attempted to make it through a very fast apprenticeship-book camp and got seven weeks in before dropping out. A lot of the material he talked about in what makes a professional programmer different: testing, logging etc… are spot on.I didn’t actually do any of the Python code, but I skipped to the end material, everything after bash. It is worth a read, and the only reason I am giving less than five stars is that I believe the author should have expanded on what logging and testing look like in more detail.

⭐I would not be surprised if the author has a teaching background, because this book is exceptionally good. It is clear, concise, unambiguous and easy to follow. I’m about half way through it and thoroughly enjoying the experience. I have the Kindle edition, which is convenient when working through the examples in the book and trying the exercises on my computer. For anyone starting out with Python, this is the book you need to get you up and running quickly.The advantage of having a kindle edition is that there are active links in the book that take you to the example code and exercise answers on the associated website, which is very convenient. But….., I like this book so much that I might order the printed version also.Thoroughly deserves five stars in my opinion. Very well written by an erudite author.

⭐I’m a fellow self taught programmer writing scientific applications in python in my day job. My main interest in this book was in checking I hadn’t missed anything on my self taught travels. I felt reassured that the author highlights key technologies like Git and bash – being able to use these is just as crucial for my group as python itself so I will recommend this text to them. Maybe a section on Anaconda and perhaps an appendix with useful python libraries and a one liner for each explaining their uses would be handy for beginners (pandas, numpy, scipy are ,my go to libraries) . Great job !

⭐No idea who thought producing this book on cheap paper would be a good idea, but the book feels cheap considering the price, and a lack of vsuals makes the learning process very tedious.

⭐This book is pretty much a python tutorial from the internet with about 15 pages at the end talking about getting a career in software engineer. If you are interested in learning Python in-depth as a beginner, with projects, buy Python Crash Course instead.

⭐Very interesting book for someone who has a basic knowledge about programming. Recommended for all. Might be a bit to quick with information you have to absorbs but it’s not for total beginners.

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