Best Beginner's Guide To Python?

[Kurt B. Kaiser]

duffman4287 at aol.com (The Tao of Spike) writes:

> I've recentlty been getting into programming.  I was wondering what
> language to learn first and after asking around I decided on Python. 
> I'm about half way through "Non-Programmers Tutorial For Python" By
> Josh Cogliati (http://www.honors.montana.edu/~jjc/easytut/easytut/)
> and I'm wondering where I should go after this.  Any help is
> appreciated, thanks.

There's more to programming than learning a language:

How to Think Like a Computer Scientist [in Python]

    http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy/

The Python Tutorial is good:

    http://www.python.org/doc/current/tut/tut.html

I have many Python books.  Most are redundant.  The one I keep
coming back to (because it's thorough and concise) is

       Python Essential Reference 
       David M. Beazley
       New Riders

but you may like

       Python in a Nutshell
       Alex Martelli
       O'Reilly

better because it's more detailed, covers Tkinter and XML, and is
updated to Python 2.2.  I use both.
 
Those two are more than just reference books, because they include
example code for each topic.

For an extended (1200 page) introduction, _Programming Python_ is
great, as others have recommended.

I would stay away from the Deitel book.  The code isn't Pythonic.

Python is unusual in that its learning curve is a series of
plateaus rather than a continuous climb.  You can do a lot
once you get to that first plateau, which doesn't take long.
(The introductory tutorial in Beazley's book is eleven pages.)

Read other people's code.  Experiment.  Code up some project.  Repeat.

Python was a good choice.

-- 
KBK