Preface

The material in this book has been developed in conjunction with a seminar that I have given for several years, a couple of times with Larry O’Brien, then with Bill Venners. Bill and I have given many iterations of this seminar and we’ve changed it many times over the years as we both have learned more about patterns and about giving the seminar.

In the process we’ve both produced more than enough information for us each to have our own seminars, an urge that we’ve both strongly resisted because we have so much fun giving the seminar together. We’ve given the seminar in numerous places in the US, as well as in Prague (where we try to have a mini-conference every Spring together with a number of other seminars). We’ve occasionally given it as an on-site seminar, but this is expensive and difficult to schedule, because there are two of us.

A great deal of appreciation goes to the people who have participated in these seminars over the years, and to Larry and Bill, as they have helped me work through these ideas and to refine them. I hope to be able to continue to form and develop these kinds of ideas through this book and seminar for many years to come.

This book will not stop here, either. After much pondering, I’ve realized that I want Thinking in Python to be, initially, a translation of this book rather than an introduction to Python (there are already plenty of fine introductions to that superb language). I find this prospect to be much more exciting than the idea of struggling through another language tutorial (my apologies to those who were hoping for that).