Effective Computation in Physics: Field Guide to Research with Python

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.

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.

It’s just not reasonable to expect to do justice to all the topics this book attempts to cover in 500 pages. I picked up a little here and there but every section left me wanting much, much more. If you want a brief introduction to a very broad range of topics covering the full work flow, this might be for you. Even then it is showing its age and the writing is a bit of a hodgepodge of styles. For useful depth you will have to go elsewhere.I wish I could give it better than 3 stars. If a greatly expanded second or third edition were available it would be great. Until then this is too little, too late.

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.

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!

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.

Given the comments I had seen by others I had higher expectations for this book. There is a brief section early in the book titled "Who this book is not for" that states "If you have already been working as a software developer for several years, this book will help you only minimally". If I had seen that before purchasing the book I probably wouldn't have purchased it. While I wouldn't describe myself as a software developer, coding has always been an essential part of my professional toolkit. I was hoping for something that would help take my game to the next level but this wasn't it.

Very well

This is a really good book, including for those who don't aren't Physicists. It's great for anyone doing any kind of numerical research work that requires/could greatly benefit from good computational skills. It covers a wide range of topics, so it's great for getting introduced to a lot of different things. It doesn't go into great detail for all that it covers, but at the very least gives a good sense of the material, which you can then dig into further elsewhere. It's nice to have strong coverage on command line work, version control, general Python stuff, and development-type work all in one book, making it a useful one to own a copy of.

This book is now a little old. Directions to places in your OS as now incorrect. Github seems to have not been updated since 2017 despite many issues with bugs and missing files reported. This means that many exercises cannot be started or if you can start errors may be encountered, not at all helpful for the learner.This was once a good book but now find something more recent or there will be some frustration coming your way.

Being new to python at university studying physics, this book really got me up to speed with the components of python. While it doesn't go very in depth to some of the components, its overview of them is brilliant, it lets you know that they are there for you and that if need be you'll have an idea as to what is required to complete your task.

I thought it might be too "beginerrish" for me, but I was wrong. It covers a wide range of topics, and seems to be very thorough. One of the programming books you can simple read. :)

ottimo!