My CTO is learning Python....

[Warren Postma]

> "There doesn't seem to be any good books on Python"


Not everyone should learn Python from a book.  

In my humble opinion, books are for building offline what
you have already started to learn by doing. In other words,
without a clear goal in mind (WHY DO I WANT TO LEARN PYTHON?
WHAT AM I GOING TO WRITE?), there is no use trying to learn
a second language.  Perhaps his brain is full. No shame in that.
Okay, well, maybe a little. <grin>

So, if the tutorial did not whet his appetite, if the idea of a 
dynamically typed object oriented language, with introspection,
and standard libraries out the yinyang don't turn this guy's crank, 
I'm tempted to think he's not as brilliant as you give him credit 
for.  

In my not so humble opinion, it ought to take a bright programmer 
about ten seconds to figure out:

1) Not everything should be written in Java or C++.

2) Very High Level OOP Languages are a powerful tool.

3) Several places where Python could be used to solve a real 
problem your boss is experiencing right now.

There is no good way to learn a language by futzing around. 
Either you want to write real code, or you don't.  It's like
trying to learn to be a concert pianist, and only playing scales,
and never learning any actual pieces. Tutorial code should give
a flavour, and then you go out and bang your head, until you
get it.  The time (minimal) from first trying python, until
the time one can actually write out working, useful python code
is probably one of the big things that helped me get religion.

;-)

Warren Postma