Technical book reviewer, ‘Advanced Python Development’

“Advanced Python Development. Using Powerful Language Features in Real-World Applications”
Author Matthew Wilkes
605 pages
Published by Apress Media, 2020

I was fortunate to be asked to be a technical reviewer for an advanced Python book. Purely by chance I’d crossed paths with the author before whilst working for some local clients, and it was a pleasure to work with Matt once more.

Matt’s Python Python experience exceeds mine yet I found I had plenty to contribute. There are the inevitable inconsistencies which creep in as you develop your ideas, restructuring and extending the content. A careful review of the content, reading it start to finish, helped me to spot these.

For a highly experienced Python developer it can be difficult to put yourself in the shoes of developers with less experience and you may forget to explain something. There may be some essential information which you’ve know for many years, but which may not be obvious to someone with less experience. My teaching experience has taught me to watch out for this.

Writing a book with 600+ pages is an enormous task and I’m very impressed with anyone who undertakes and completes it. Despite having read plenty of Python books, I felt that this book used a refreshing approach. It is very practical, concentrating on writing robust, deployment-ready code. I’m pleased to have played a small part in its creation (oh, and to have my name and pictures inside it 🙂 ).