Effective Computation in Physics: Field Guide to Research with Python 1st Edition

This book should be required (and enjoyable) reading for any student/researcher/scientist/engineer new to scientific computing. The book presents a modern account of the Python scientific computing environment from the command line to publication and everything good in between e.g. NumPy to parallel computing to version control and much more (see http://physics.codes for more). The book also helps you get quickly going with Python on your computer via the Anaconda environment which is very nice. I bought the Kindle version and plan to read it on my iPad while I try the programs (freely available for download at the above website) on my Macbook (ideal combination in my opinion) - it's never been more fun to be in scientific computing that it is these days and this book will help you get started or, like me, maintain and update your overall computational skill set. A must buy and a must read! Enjoy!

Good content, but my book came damaged

I use different coding languages for different purposes. MATLAB is my go-to for scientific programming that is visual-intensive. C++ or C is my preferred language for heavy computational work that does not necessarily require plotting images (I follow up with quick plots in gnuplot). Unix is amazing for fast computations, working with files and directories on my computer, and working with supercomputers. HTML is great for websites (it was the first coding language I learned, I was 13 years old at the time). For me personally, I prefer Python for plotting purposes, you can do some really cool things with Matplotlib. Good book for familiarizing yourself with Python in a computational physics context.

This is more of a "here's how we physicists do scientific computation, oh and here's some Python basics" rather than a real tutorial on Python. This will get you into the ecosystem but that's about it, you'll need another solution to actually learn Python in any practical manner. On the other hand, it is a good attempt at addressing the breadth of knowledge useful to those of us that work in scientific or engineering computation. But for the most part I was hoping for more depth. Some very bare bones parts in here, like "here's a python package you'll want for doing this general thing, now go and look on stackoverflow or the package docs on how to actually use it", pattern repeated throughout. But if you aren't familiar about what the field of scientific computation entails this is a good primer.

Amazingly practical book. I anticipate this will remain a staple in my reference library. I truly wish other books were as thorough as this one. Highest recommendation.

This book has been teaching me more than effective computation! I've learned about the community, the myths and the jokes so that I can laugh as well. The digital version contains color-coded python code, really awesome

As the title of the book says; you learn computation in physics with little bit of python.If you want to learn python and no physics/science; this book IS NOT for you. If you are a scientist who wants to learn automation for you projects; this book IS for you.I bought this book for learning python, I am not a scientist nor a phycicist. Every practice in this book revolves around physics and atoms, they are very hard to understand if you're not a scientist yourself.First one hundred pages are decent python learning material, the rest is for automating atom science applications.I should've done more research about this book before spending over 40 dollars for this. Well this was a lesson.

Very well