Flask Web Development by Miguel Grinberg

Flask_web_devMiguel Grinberg is a pythonista who works for Rackspace and has been doing software development for like twenty-five years. He’s also a good writer, as to be expected from O’Reilly and of course the editing is superb as well.

At least in terms of the readable-by-mere-mortal programming, there seem to be three basic types of approach.

  • Point by point, often language-specific specific approaches that explore each aspect of their subject. Like an ABCs of Foo Bar.
  • Step-by-step often framework-specific works that walk the user through use of a framework by example like “How to Bla in FoozleBarstool”
  • Inner-workings philosophical abstractions that may apply to any language or framework

One of the things I like about programming books is that I can read them away from the screen and take in the information in a more abstract way. (It’s apparently been proven than due to some kind of spacial-something-or-other, the mind does a better job of absorbing information on paper than in screen.) The more abstract information and delivery work better when not following along in paint by numbers fashion.

This book lies pretty squarely in the step-by-step framework-specific category, which it does a very friendly job of. But there is also a really nice portion in the last part of the book which explores the structuring of a large program in a way that also works on a more abstracted level.

If you’re like me and want either an easy getting-started with Flash book or want to explore it away from the screen, this is a wonderful choice.

Grinberg has some videos from PyCon 2014 and 2015 that are well worth checking out as well.