Should we still be learning this?

[B Mahoney]

I was initally annoyed that "Dive into Python" has the UserDict, but it
was so
easy to discover it was deprecated
http://docs.python.org/lib/module-UserDict.html
(althought the term 'deprecated' is not specifically used), that anyone
on the
ball (the OP seemed to know) would not based their next big project on
UserDict.

I agree that Python has so many good concepts, and improvements with
each new version, that something in a course will be outdated. I can
concur
that knowing Python made it much easier to go back to C++ and Java and
understand the OO.

My tip for an book on Python with only the latest information, nothing
beats the Python Pocket Reference, 3rd edition,  (O'Reilly) which
is updated for  2.4 and seems to clearly label any deprecated features.