Where to go from here? newbee

[Jules Dubois]

On Thu, 1 Jan 2004 09:45:00 -0600, in article
<news:bt1fe3030pf at enews1.newsguy.com>, Richard wrote:

>  Jules Dubois wrote:
> 
>  > Go to http://www.cs.unm.edu/~ej and click on these links.
> 
>  >   Python Hacking I (Just do it!)
>  >   Python Hacking II (types, functions, exceptions)
>  >   Python Hacking III
> 
>  > Type the commands and see what happens.
> 
> Ok. Now I'm slowly understanding.

In an earlier article, you said "It's like teaching 1st grade stuff to a
college grad."  These files were created by a university senior and were
intended as quick-and-dirty "tutorials", introducing Python to a
senior-level engineering class.  All were new to Python.

What I liked about the tutorials was they were instructive but required the
user to determine the correspondence between the input and output.  If you
or anyone else wants the tutorials, download them now before the account is
removed.  I believe the author graduated in December.

> I guess you could say that python is
> similar to visual basic and c++ in coding.

It's not much like Visual Basic and is perhaps somewhat similar to C++.  As
I learn Smalltalk, what I'm noticing more and more is how similar they are
-- less Smalltalk's integrated environment.

Further, if you're an experienced programmer, I recommend _Python in a
Nutshell_ by Alex Martelli.  I've read it cover to cover about a dozen
times now and my conclusion is that it's one of the very best programming
language books I've read (and I've read many in the last 25 years.)

Finally, download the Python documentation from Python.org.

> I have a program written in python which has several "py" files included.
> How do I view these for the coding examples?

.py files are source code, so load them into your favorite text editor.  I
use XEmacs.