some random reflections of a "Python newbie": (1) books, and free sites

[Grant Edwards]

In article <82pcm0$p6t$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>, Preston Landers wrote:
>In article <82o0to$6eq$1 at serv1.iunet.it>,
>  "Alex Martelli" <alex at magenta.com> wrote:
>
>> 1. what put me off Python for so long?
>>     Short answer: the book "Programming Python" did.
>
>"Programming Python" indeed sucks.  I hear a revised edition is in the
>works, but don't hold your breath.  Avoid this book like the plague.
>I'm sorry it put you off Python.  No one needs a turgid, out of date
>rehash of the material on python.org.

"Programming with Python" also sucks.  

Don't buy it.  

It's mostly just a collection of example scripts and an
incomplete rehash of of the language and library references.
Everytime I need to look up something, I end up looking on the
web pages 

The CD that comes with it isn't even usable: everything is in
compressed tar files, so you have to copy the examples to
another drive to look at or try them.  The _least_ they could
have done is uncompressed and untarred the stuff so that it was
usable from the CD.  The CD only has 13 Meg of space used, so
there's no reason to have the files compressed -- other than
they were too f@#%ing lazy to think about making a usable CD
and just dumped a copy of their ftp site onto the CD.

I was in a hurry, and the only other book in stock was the
pocket reference from O'Reilly.  Had I spent more time browsing
through the book, it would still be on the shelf.

What I'd like is a good intermediate level book written for an
audience that already knows the basics of programming and
language theory.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  Will the third world
                                  at               war keep "Bosom Buddies"
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