Newbie

[Keith Woeltje]

While Beazley is indeed an "essential reference," it's really intended
as just that--a reference. Someone completely new to programming would
have a hard time getting started. with that. Complete newbies need a lot
of words--they need to have concepts explained in multiple ways until
one clicks. Clearly there needs to be two type of Python "beginners"
books--one for programmers who are new to Python (Learning Python and
The Quick Python Book both good in this category, although they make
some concessions to the programming newbie. Core Python even tries a bit
harder to ease in those new to programming), and the other type for
those new to programming who are using Python as their first language (a
good choice, I think most on this newsgroup would agree. Gauld's book is
the only one that really makes an effor to approach this, although there
are also some web sites that try.) I think the tutorial falls more into
the first category. Probably not the best source for the true newbie.

On a different note, and forgive me for being unkind, but one can only
imagine that someone with e-mail addresses of pcgamesrule at hotmail.com
and justsurfn2004 at aol.com is headed towards a career of being a l33t
scriptkiddie. Hopefully learning Python will keep him on the light side
of the force ;-) .
>K

"Kurt B. Kaiser" wrote:

> Amazon says June 13, you can pre-order. Definitely worth
> getting the 2nd ed.
>
> Most of the "beginner" books are *way* too wordy! It
> would be better to be concise like Beazley and take
> the space to teach more general programming ideas.