Looking for a programming resource for newbees

[bruno at modulix]

bambooforest wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm from a Linguistics background and am new(er) to programming. Could
> someone recommend a book or resource that teaches programming aspects
> with Python? Python I hear is a very appropriate language for handling
> text and language processing.

You may want to have a look at David Mertz's "Text Processing in Python"
> I'm searching for a resource that examines programming from a case
> study like perspective. Such as, you're faced with problem of type X -
> and here's how you should look at it to break it down to form an
> optimal solution (e.g. because this type or problem is handled well
> with this type of data structure, etc.).
> 
> I've looked at the online Python tutorial at python.org and resources
> like O'Reilly's Python in a Nutshell, but they seem to teach you
> language syntax and concepts like data types, or assume you already
> know how to program. I'm searching for something that teaches
> programming. 

Learning to program usually imply learning the syntax and concepts of at
least one language.

Like with natural languages, there are some concepts that are difficult
if not impossible to express in some languages - so sometime you need to
learn a new language if you want to grasp the concept. Some other
concepts you'll find, one way of another, in almost any language, so for
more advanced books/tutorials/whatever, knowledge of these concepts is a
prerequisite - just like a book on grammar suppose that the reader knows
at least how to read and write, what's a verb, a sentence, a word, etc...

Also, like natural languages, programming languages also have idioms,
and learning these idioms is a non-trivial part of learning a language.


-- 
bruno desthuilliers
python -c "print '@'.join(['.'.join([w[::-1] for w in p.split('.')]) for
p in 'onurb at xiludom.gro'.split('@')])"