Questions from a beginner

[Cameron Laird]

In article <1103_983792888 at breakdown>,
Alison Myers  <squirmy at freeuk.com> wrote:
>Hi. I'm a beginning programmer at a fairly late age and have been looking for a language to learn.
>I have decided against starting with C or C++ because I think they will be too complicated and they seem to be only really needed for writing device drivers and operating systems, which is not what I wat to do.
>Is python a good language to learn first? Will my knowledge help me with other languages later?
>I will be writing for win98 and Linux and I know Python is available on both of these, but would the code be transportable, especially if I write things using tcl (this is probably a long way off yet, but I'd like to know).
>I have links to online tutorials, but where would I find good source code?
>Do I need to buy any books to help me and if so which do you recommend?
>Is there a list of programming projects anywhere or would I get these from a textbook?
>I probably need to brush up on my maths, so what specific topics should I look at?
			.
			.
			.
Most of the answers are, "Yes."  I've argued before that
Python is the best first language
<URL: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2000/06/02/magazine/python_first_language.html >.
-- 

Cameron Laird <claird at NeoSoft.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html