Mark Lutz is the world leader in Python training, the author of Python's earliest and best-selling texts, and a pioneering figure in the Python community since 1992. He has been a software developer for 25 years, and is the author of O'Reilly's Programming Python, 3rd Edition and Python Pocket Reference, 3rd Edition.
The animal on the cover of
Programming Python
is
an African rock python, one of approximately 18 species of python. Pythons
are nonvenomous constrictor snakes that live in tropical regions of Africa,
Asia, Australia, and some Pacific Islands. Pythons live mainly on the
ground, but they are also excellent swimmers and climbers. Both male and
female pythons retain vestiges of their ancestral hind legs. The male python
uses these vestiges, or spurs, when courting a female.
The python kills its prey by suffocation. While the snake’s sharp
teeth grip and hold the prey in place, the python’s long body coils around
its victim’s chest, constricting tighter each time it breathes out. Pythons
feed primarily on mammals and birds. Python attacks on humans are extremely
rare.
The cover image is a 19th-century engraving from the
Dover
Pictorial Archive
. The cover font is Adobe ITC Garamond. The text
font is Linotype Birka; the heading
font is
Adobe
Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont’s
TheSansMono
Condensed
.