Critical Review of Common Mistakes in the Python Book “From 0 to 1”

While browsing Douban, the author discovered a highly‑rated Python book titled From 0 to 1 (published by People’s Posts and Telecommunications Press) and bought it, only to find that the first fourteen chapters contain dozens of factual and conceptual mistakes.

Key erroneous claims highlighted include:

Python variables can only use English letters – the book ignores Unicode variable names, e.g. 世界 = 'World' .

Triple‑quoted strings are presented as multi‑line comments, whereas they are string literals; Python developers normally use # for comments.

Stating that Python has no switch statement without mentioning the match ... case syntax introduced in 3.10.

Claiming Python lacks arrays, while the array module exists in the standard library.

Incorrectly asserting that del cannot remove the last list element, despite del animals[-1] working as expected.

Listing join() as a list method; it is a string method.

Suggesting that assigning an empty list to a variable clears the original list, ignoring Python's name binding semantics.

Misrepresenting list multiplication rules, replace count defaults, split maxsplit parameter, and strip() accepting only a single character.

Incorrectly describing dictionaries as unordered (they preserve insertion order since Python 3.7) and claiming that printing a set sorts its elements.

Stating that __init__ must use a parameter named self and that accessing class attributes via an instance is “non‑standard”.

Providing a buggy try ... finally example where the file is opened inside the try block, leading to an undefined variable in finally .

Recommending readlines() over iterating with for line in f: , and discouraging the use of regular‑expression search / match functions.

Confusing shallow and deep copy semantics when using dictionary unpacking {**person} .

After documenting thirty representative errors, the author concludes that the book is riddled with misinformation and advises Python learners to avoid it. The post ends with a promotional QR code offering free Python courses and resources, followed by links to additional Python‑related articles.