Python for non-programmers

[Jason Stokes]

Dennis E. Hamilton wrote in message ...

>That helped him get
>through to section 2.1 but things got tough around section 2.1.1 where
there
>was no way to get through what was being talked about without more
>grounding.  ("Argument," for Pete's sake!)


I find one thing that's really lacking is an intermediate level book that
goes through every concept, very carefully and simply, with lots of examples
and explanations of how you use it.  Take, for example, the concept of the
"namespace."  It was extremely painful for me to learn this when I first
encountered it (in C++) because it wasn't a beginner concept and the
explanations I read (in Stroustroup's "The C++ Language) were rather
unclear.  Then I had even more trouble adapting to Perl's namespace rules,
which I still don't quite properly understand (eg dictionary passing using a
namespace object.)

This book would be very long, but also very useful.  Most beginner books
start you off with an intuitive or sketchily defined notion of what a
variable actually is, which leads to confusion.  New programmers typically
confuse an object with the name that references it, for example.