which book?

[Fernando Pérez]

Preben wrote:

> I've been recommended to buy a Python book,
> but I'm not sure which one I should buy..
> 
> Somebody told me to buy Python2.1 Bible.
> Anybody got an opinion?

My personal 'ideal' combination: 'Learning Python' to get going, and 'Python 
Essential Reference' beyond there. But the most useful of all might be the 
set of built-in docs, which is great. When you get to deep details, you may 
need the vast reference of 'Programming Python'.

I tend to be partial to books by O'Reilly and NewRiders (though the latter 
could learn from the former in the binding and font size depts) as they seem 
to have some of the best indexing around, plus a very low tolerance for fluff 
and 'every reader is an idiot' crap. But I've also heard good things about 
books like 'Core Python', and I'm sure others may give you pointers. Check out

        http://www.awaretek.com/plf.html

for a very comprehensive list of book reviews.

If you are under windows, there seems to be a very nicely packaged version of 
all the essential on-line docs at 

        http://www.orgmf.com.ar/condor/pytstuff.html

Under Linux, you can just bookmark the index file for the local copy of the 
html docs (or the web one if you have constant high bandwidth). The above 
'python shelf' for windows seems to integrate everything very nicely though,  
with a good global searcher. Anyone up to make a similar thing under linux, 
using htdig?

Cheers,

f