This is the latest book by Al Sweigart, an author who enjoys great popularity and recognition, on his website inventwithpython.com you can find a good number of books ranging from a book that invites us to learn programming by developing simple video games "Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python" which is already in its fourth edition, to a book of best practices for professionals "Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python". One of his books "Automate Boring Stuff with Python", which has sold around 300 thousand copies on Amazon, is one of those books that anyone would think that someone should have written before, but no one had dared to do it, here we are guided on the basic tasks to work with resources that are common to almost everyone: working on the file system, manipulating office documents, and interacting with Internet resources.
Sweigart's formula is consistent and effective: we start by reviewing the solution to the problem, which invites us to think about how everything must work behind the scenes, and then he shows us in greater or lesser detail how this solution was constructed. It is obvious that he is not the inventor of this method nor is he the only one who has used it in programming, other good examples are the books "Dive into Python" by Mark Pilgrim where a similar formula is applied with great success.
In "The Big Book" this methodology is applied systematically throughout 81 programs ordered alphabetically, following a brief introduction we find three sections: "The Program in Action" where the author shows an example of program execution, then in "How It Works" he shows us the source code just mentioning implementation details, and "Exploring the Program" where he asks some questions to encourage the reader to deepen the understanding of the program or in some cases, extend it. Most probably the author's intention is not that we advance sequentially from beginning to end, but that among the large number of topics we work on those that call our attention, in this sense it is very useful Appendix A: "Tag Index" where he shows us a classification of the programs based on two systems: by length, and by characteristics.
The result is not a book that intends to explain how Python works, or how programs are built, this has already been done by Sweigart in his previous books, especially in "Invent Your Own Computer Games". "The Big Book of Small Python Projects" should be understood more as a guide to lab experiments where you are given directions on an activity that you should do yourself, or perhaps ideally in a group with friends or work/study colleagues. In this sense, it would not be unreasonable for me to see a Wiki or a GitHub repository where people could post observations or variants of the programs.
Personally, I have very much enjoyed all his books, and have recommended them all at one time or another. And I am also too close to his pedagogical approach that I have largely incorporated into my work as a teacher to offer an objective viewpoint. There are some implementation details that are not to my liking, such as the use of lowerCamelCase for naming variables, functions and methods, which contradicts the PEP8 that most use, or the preferential use of the format method rather than f-strings, but there is an open invitation here for everyone to adjust it to their liking. Beyond any captious remarks, I recommend this book without reservation, not only for individual reading but also as a basis for various collective activities. For example, as a source of ideas for a programming club or a programming camp, as complementary material for a professional training process, and even as inspiration to study other programming languages, I personally have been using it to study Scala.
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