Best Python Books to Grow Your Coding Skills

The books listed here cover the fundamentals of Python, and delve into database management. They provide opportunities to enhance your coding skills. Whether you are new to programming or seeking to broaden your knowledge, these books are an excellent resources for your learning journey.

So, here we go…

📚 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Python

Authors: Kenneth Reitz and Tanya Schlusser

This comprehensive guide has been created to assist both beginner and advanced Python developers in efficiently setting up, configuring, and utilizing Python in their daily work. It offers a personalized approach, and a different perspective from Python’s official documentation.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Python is a great guide for Python developers of all levels. It covers various aspects of the language, including best practices for code organization, coding style, testing, and deployment.

The guide is well-written and presents information in a clear and concise manner, making it easy to understand for beginners. It also provides advanced tips and tricks for experienced developers. Overall, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Python is a highly recommended resource for anyone looking to improve their skills in Python programming.

Additionally, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Python is a continually evolving resource, designed to adapt to the changing needs of the Python community. If you have expertise in the field and would like to contribute to its growth and development, you can do so by forking the project on GitHub.

The open-source nature of the guide allows for a collaborative effort, ensuring that it remains up-to-date and relevant.

Link to get the book: https://docs.python-guide.org/

📚 Automate the Boring Stuff with Python

Author: Al Sweigart

This is one of the best Python books on sale worldwide, teaching Python 3 to everyone, including technically trained beginners and humanities students as well as geeks. The book guides you through each program with clear, step-by-step instructions, allowing you to efficiently learn how to write Python programs.

The author, Al Sweigart (website), provides updated practice projects at the end of each chapter to reinforce your learning and ensure you can apply your new skills. This book is a must-have resource for anyone looking to master Python programming.

You’ll learn the basics of Python and become familiar with rich library modules for tasks such as gathering data from Web sites, reading PDF and word documents, and automating tasks involving clicking and typing. The second edition of the book includes a new chapter on input validation, as well as tutorials on automating Gmail and Google Sheets, plus tips on automatically updating CSV files.

In addition to the new chapter, you’ll also learn how to create programs that effortlessly perform the good tasks of automating text searches in a file or multiple files, creating, updating, moving, and renaming files and folders, searching the Internet and downloading online content, updating and formatting data in any size Excel spreadsheet, filling out online forms, and much more.

Link to get the book: https://automatetheboringstuff.com/

📚 Python Data Science Handbook

Author: Jake VanderPlas

The Python Data Science Handbook is an excellent resource for anyone looking to learn the foundational tools used by data scientists in Python. The book provides clear explanations and code examples for using the key libraries, including Numpy, Pandas, Matplotlib, and Scikit-learn.

The Python Data Science Handbook is an indispensable resource for scientists and data analysts who are proficient in reading and writing Python code. This comprehensive desk reference is the perfect solution for addressing daily challenges in data manipulation, transformation, cleaning, visualization, and statistical/machine learning modeling.

The book is written with the working scientist in mind and provides practical guidance for real-world problems. If you are looking for a go-to reference for scientific computing in Python, then look no further. The Python Data Science Handbook is a must-have for anyone who wants to excel in data science and analysis using Python.

Link to get the book: https://jakevdp.github.io/PythonDataScienceHandbook/

📚 Python for Everybody

Author: Dr. Charles R. Severance

The purpose of this book is to provide a computer science-oriented introduction to programming. What differs the approach used in this book is a greater emphasis on using Python to solve data analysis problems common in the world of computer science.

This is also a comprehensive textbook for beginners who want to learn the Python programming language. The book covers the basics of Python, including syntax, data structures, and control structures, as well as more advanced topics such as databases, web services, and data visualization.

The author, Dr. Charles R. Severance (website), presents the material in a clear and easy-to-follow manner, making it accessible to a wide range of students, including those with little to no prior programming experience.

The book also includes a range of exercises and examples to reinforce the concepts being covered, and the code is well-commented and easy to understand. Overall, “Python for Everybody” is an excellent resource for anyone looking to start learning Python, and is particularly well-suited for students and educators.

Link to get the book: https://www.py4e.com/html3/

📚 Learn Python Programming

Author: Fabrizio Romano

This book is a quick, thorough, and practical introduction to Python, an extremely flexible and powerful programming language that can be used in many disciplines.

Unlike other books, it doesn’t bore you with detailed explanations of the basics, but allows you to master the language quickly. You’ll start by learning the basics of Python so that you have a solid foundation on which to build.

You’ll explore different programming paradigms and find the best approach to the situation; you’ll understand how to perform performance optimization and efficient debugging; manage program flow; and use the data exchange format. You’ll also learn about cryptographic services in Python and understand what secure tokens are.

The “Learn Python Programming” will give you a firm understanding of the Python language. You’ll learn how to write programs, build websites, and work with data using Python’s popular data libraries. Filled with real-world examples and projects, the book covers different types of applications and concludes by creating real-world projects.

Link to get the book: https://www.packtpub.com/free-ebook/learn-python-programming-second-edition/9781788996662

👉 The Packt website has many other free Python books, available after registration.

📚 Natural Language Processing with Python

Authors: Steven Bird, Ewan Klein and Edward Loper

This book is an introduction to the field of NLP or Natural Language Processing using the Python programming language. The authors, Steven Bird, Ewan Klein, and Edward Loper, have extensive experience in the field of NLP and provide practical guidance for solving real-world NLP problems.

The book covers the fundamentals of NLP, including text processing, tokenization, and stemming, as well as advanced topics such as sentiment analysis, text classification, and machine translation. It includes a range of code examples and exercises, making it easy for readers to follow along and apply the concepts to their own NLP projects.

The book can be used for individual study or as a textbook for a course in natural language processing or computational linguistics, or as a supplement to courses in artificial intelligence, text analysis or corpus linguistics. The book is highly practical and contains hundreds of fully worked examples and graded exercises.

The book is based on the Python programming language and the open source Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) library. NLTK includes extensive software, data, and documentation that can be freely downloaded from http://nltk.org/. Distributions are provided for Windows, macOS, and Unix platforms.

Link to get the book: https://www.nltk.org/book/

Conclusion

Learning Python has never been easier thanks to the abundance of free books and other resources available online. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to take your skills to the next level, this list of the best free Python books is a great resource to have at your fingertips.

So, choose the book that best suits your level and learning style and start coding today. Remember, the only limit to your success is your determination and hard work."

Good luck learning Python!

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