The Open Source Zone

Who is interested in using Python to script within COM, thus fully merging Python into a win32 environment, will surely find this book useful.

If you know nothing about Python, Visual Basic, scripting languages, Win32 API, MFC, COM, active scripting, Windows Networking and NT administration, then after you've read this book you'll get some very general idea of what these all are about: this book covers them all, as well as many other things. But whenever it comes to tell you something really interesting, authors just say: "well, it's out of the scope of this book, so let's stop here..."<p>However, there are things this book does not cover. For instance, I thought scripting languages are a handy tool for text processing, but throughout this book I encountered only one mention of regular expressions - in the context of filtering file names, and you won't find regular expressions in the Index. From 10-page Chapter "Working with Email" you'll learn what SMTP and POP3 stand for, and from 15-page Appendix(!) "Threads" you'll learn that Python has something to do with threads, and fairly much about COM threading model.<p>Information in this 650-page book can fit a dozen-page article. Most of all this book looks like a slide show for marketing, trying to convince them that Python is the answer to all questions. And most of the time it sounds like: "It's easy, we won't tell you exactly what and how, but for smart guys like us who can read man pages, it's very easy."

This books is neither a Python tutorial book nor a Windows programming book. The title of this book greatly mis-represents the contents. <p>If you are not a Windows COM programmer who's trying to learn Python or are trying develop Python applications on other platforms, please look for other Python books.

Python is the best choice for people who want to implement COM in the software they develop - mostly due to its clear structure and object - oriented nature. This is where this book mostly comes.<p>This book is well-written, practical-oriented and ideal for the newbie programmer who has already some idea over Python (O'Reilly's 'Learning Python' is the best place to start).<p>However, even experienced programmers need it because it provides a set of useful examples for rapid prototyping and reuse components.<p>It misses a few spots - First, you can't find much help on working on GUIs - and second (and most important) SWIG does not get the attention it deserves - it is just mentioned.<p>Finally, if you use Python in Win32 - or if you cannot decide what kind of COM solution you wish to develop - DO NOT CONSIDER TAKING A STEP WITHOUT THIS BOOK !

Python is the best choice for people who want to implement COM in the software they develop - mostly due to its clear structure and object - oriented nature. This is where this book mostly comes.<p>This book is well-written, practical-oriented and ideal for the newbie programmer who has already some idea over Python (O'Reilly's 'Learning Python' is the best place to start).<p>However, even experienced programmers need it because it provides a set of useful examples for rapid prototyping and reuse components.<p>It misses a few spots - First, you can't find much help on working on GUIs - and second (and most important) SWIG does not get the attention it deserves - it is just mentioned.<p>Finally, if you use Python in Win32 - or if you cannot decide what kind of COM solution you wish to develop - DO NOT CONSIDER TAKING A STEP WITHOUT THIS BOOK !