Beginning programming with Python

[Skip Montanaro]

    Aaron> How quickly can I expect to pick up Python?

You should be comfortable with the syntactic elements of Python in a few
minutes (modulo the indentation-based block structure that tends to
initially derail people with a Perl/C/Pascal background) and presuming you
are familiar with object-oriented programming, comfortable with the language
as a whole within a few hours.  Unlike Perl, where much of the power is in
the language itself (e.g., its regex machinery), much of Python's
functionality lies in modules that you import when you need them (see
http://www.python.org/doc/lib/modindex.html, for example).  Getting
comfortable with a large fraction of that will take awhile.  There are
probably a half-dozen modules that you'll need to master fairly quickly and
pass on to your students, however: sys, string and os come to mind as well
as several of the builtin functions (available also via the module
__builtin__ and referred to in the library manual that way), and perhaps re
and time.

    Aaron> Secondly, if I choose to use Python for this, I would like to
    Aaron> supply each student with a reference book on Python.

>From what I've seen on the list, Learning Python sounds like a more
appropriate book for first-time programmers, though I've personally not seen
it.  Also, I would think that others, like me, who learned Python well
before any books were available and already knew other languages might be
ill-equipped to make unbiased recommendations in this area.  I have PP, and
while it is an excellently written book, I'd grown so used to using the
online docs, scanning the newsgroup archives and browsing source code that I
didn't find it added much to my existing sources of information, so I've
rarely used it.  You might want to scan through the reviews of both books at
Amazon.com to see what others have to say.

Finally, you might want to check out Guido van Rossum's Computer Programming
for Everybody (CP4E) project at

    http://www.python.org/doc/essays/cp4e.html

Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/
skip at mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/
847-971-7098   | Python: Programming the way Guido indented...