Core Python Programming (3rd Edition)

This book is a fully updated edition of the long-bestselling Core Python Programming (2nd Edition), aimed at intermediate developers who already know basic Python syntax and want to systematically strengthen their practical skills. The book is divided into three parts by theme. Part 1 focuses on general application development, covering regular expressions and their implementation in the re module, network and socket programming, Internet client programming, multithreading and concurrency, GUI programming, database access, Microsoft Office automation, and extending Python with C. Part 2 turns to web development, explaining web clients and servers, CGI and WSGI programming, using the Django framework, cloud computing platforms such as Google App Engine, and methods for building advanced web services. Part 3 serves as supplementary and lab chapters, discussing topics such as text processing and non-relational databases, and addressing cross-version migration between Python 2 and Python 3. The book does not settle for listing syntax but organizes its content around "how to use Python to solve real problems": each chapter starts from a requirement, provides runnable code examples with explanations, and reinforces understanding with end-of-chapter exercises. The author, Wesley Chun, has long worked in Python teaching and engineering practice; his writing progresses from shallow to deep, and he gives dedicated explanations of easily confused details (such as the difference between match and search, when to encode and decode, and choosing between threads and processes). The book is therefore better suited as a "second Python book," helping readers move from writing scripts to designing complete modules and applications. The content accommodates both Python 2 and Python 3 readers, but some environments and dependencies in the network programming and web framework chapters are now dated, and readers need to make choices in light of current mainstream technology stacks.