I download a PDF version and test all the program samples with Python2.7, unfortunately many problems occurred and I have to switch to Python3.7 so the samples all turn right, you can find the latest version of this book here online, all others version are quite dated
I have little background of Python and NLP, that’s why I read this book, which could help me enhance the intuition both Python and NLP, though nltk is not the most used NLP module of Python, and learn Spacy is my very next step
Because author have a cross domain (Linguists and Computer Sciences) background, he can think problems like this:
Linguists are sometimes asked how many languages they speak, and have to explain that this field actually concerns the study of abstract structures that are shared by languages, a study which is more profound and elusive than learning to speak as many languages as possible. Similarly, computer scientists are sometimes asked how many programming languages they know, and have to explain that computer science actually concerns the study of data structures and algorithms that can be implemented in any programming language, a study which is more profound and elusive than striving for fluency in as many programming languages as possible.
I used to be ask how many languages you can speak, not just human languages, but also computer languages such as PHP, Python, Node and so on, I think this quote make me finally open my mind and overstride my mental obstruction, language is not important, quantity is just appearance, reason is all
Author’s TED, and a very motivated story in this not well prepared lecture:
