About Learning Python, 6th Edition

[February 2025] A new, 6th Edition of the classic book Learning Python has been released.

After six months of writing, this edition was submitted to its publisher in September 2024, and an "Early Release" version became available online in November 2024. The final version was released as a 1,300-page emedia book and 1,200-page print book on February 25, 2025. Ebook, online, and Kindle versions were available two days later, and the print version will start shipping in mid March.

This edition drops coverage of the now-sunsetted Python 2.X line and updates its content to be current with Python 3.12 and the decade of changes since its prior edition. It also gives more focus to non-Windows platforms, including smartphones, and trims some 350 pages (450 in print).

Among its new 3.X content, this edition covers f-string literals, named-assignment expressions, match statements, type hinting, async coroutines, underscore digit separators, exception groups, module attribute hooks, star-unpacking proliferation, main-script package files, dictionary-key insertion order, positional-only function arguments, hash-based bytecode files, and other additions, deprecations, and changes.

This book's prior 5th Edition can still serve as a useful introduction to Python but is now dated and needlessly convoluted by 2.X coverage. If you're able to upgrade, the 6th Edition will be more current with today's Python language and world and will benefit from the improvements that naturally flow from a full rewrite cycle.

Size note: In the print (paper) version of this edition, two advanced and optional chapters have been moved online as freely downloadable PDFs. This helps reduce the print book's size to 1,169 pages—29% slimmer than the prior edition—and enables print-on-demand modes that ensure availability. This edition's ebook and online versions contain all chapters, including the two moved online in print, and check in at 1,267 pages and 23% shorter (exception: Kindle renders 2500 pages).