Python is ideal for beginners

[Paul F. Dubois]

There are several free tutorials.  One is "How to think like a computer
scientist" for absolute beginners at programming.

See http://greenteapress.com/thinkpython.html

"pedro alvarez" <dickerc6 at hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:bfac4f24.0302061044.5876c99d at posting.google.com...
> 'Python is ideal for beginers'
> How many times have i seen that statement?
> Is python ideal for beginners?
> Upon close investigation and thinking, this is what i found out:
>
> The majority of the python communities resources are geared towards
> attracting and absorbing refugees from other languages, not attracting
> fresh young converts.( i myself run away from c/c++)
>
> Going around the web, u see tutorials on advanced concepts like gui's,
> oop,
> web programming etc. U dont see many that teach basic concepts,
> because usually it is assumed the reader cut his teath using c++, java
> etc.
>
> Also, given pythons own flexibility and open endedness, a fresh
> programmer might need some guidance, cos it might be easy to get
> confused.
> Granted, maybe in a university enviroment, with a lecturer giving
> guidance,
> it may be ideal.
> But is that how we all learned programming? No, most programmers as
> young children had access to pc's. Being curious, they wanted to
> tinker more.
> In my dos days, we used qbasic.
> And python is being recommended to those tinkerers.
>
> I think freshers should rather be asked to start with c or vb, cos
> theres loads
> of information for beginners.
> Also, without having to deal with braces and memory leaks in c, or
> vb's verbosity how is he going to appreciate python?
>
> So, the conclusion is the python community at the moment is an ideal
> refugee shelter,and not a place for fresh recruits.
> To further demonstrate, can u show me a prominent author who began his
> programming with python?(chuckle,chuckle)
> The only authors u see are example:
> 'George Python(or Osama Bin Python or Raj Python) was programming in
> fortran for
> 85 years before discovering python.'