the second edition have confession to make when wrote the first edition of this booki didn' have clue what was doing thought knew python and thought knew how to write quickly learned that this was false luckilyi became adept at both by finishing the booki was so afraid that people wouldn' like python object oriented programming that skipped pycon for two years straight after couple dozen positive reviewsmy confidence was boosted and finally attended pycon in santa clara soon discovered that nobody had ever heard of me or my book so much for arrogancei was also afraid to reread the book after completing it so while it has received many accoladesthe copy on my shelf has remained firmly shutsave for when open it for reference to answer reader' query in preparing this second editioni was finally forced to face my demons to my surprise and joyi discovered that the book wrote five years ago was both accurate and enjoyablejust as many reviewers had suggested shortly after that initial rereadingi got my first ever negative review on amazon it would have been devastating had read it directly after completing the project fortunatelyfour years of good reviews and my own confidence in the writing allowed me to ignore the vitriol and take the remainder as constructive feedback the truth is many of the flaws the reviewer had pointed out were features at the time the book was originally published python object oriented programming was showing its ageand it was clearly time for an update you're holding the result in your hands (or flipping through it on your -readeri've often wondered why authors describe in detail what has changed between the editions of technical book meanseriouslyhow many people reading this second edition have read the first oneas with software versionsyou safely assume the latest edition is the bestand you don' really care about the project' history and yetthis project has consumed so much of my life over the past year that can' leave without few words about how much better the book has become