Rethinking the Python tutorial

[Magnus Lycka]

JW wrote:
> I started with the official tutorial.  It seemed up to date to me.
> Things that changed from 2.4 to 2.5 changed in the tutorial as well. 

Agreed. I mainly felt that A Byte of Python seems to go through
the features in Python in a more systematic way. The official
tutorial is being kept up to date concerning details, but it's
basically the same text as ten years ago. I think we owe a lot
of gratitude to Fred Drake and all the other peope who have put
a lot of efforts into the tutorial, but it's too much to expect
that they would transform it significantly. It was written a
long time ago, with different users, use cases and features in
mind.

If we would really get a user guide, I guess there is less reason
to have a differently organized tutorial though. Today, I guess we
suffer from the fact that the tutorial is the only place to describe
things that don't fit in the library reference in a user-oriented
way. Yet, the tutorial is not organized as a reference, and from
the purely tutorial point of view, it wouldn't have to be complete.

> I haven't tried "A Byte of Python", so I can't comment.

Please do. I've been programming Python since 1996, so I'm
really just guessing when I try to judge material for beginners.
My impression is that it's aa good and well organized tutorial.

> I tried to learn from "Dive into Python", but I found that it went too
> quickly. 

Right. I would not suggest replacing the official tutorial
with that. I see it more as a complement.

> "Dive into Python" is not being kept up to date.  The last revision was
> May 2004, and several things have changed since then.

Ok. There are two issues here I guess.

First of all, any official material needs to be kept up
to date, whether it's the old tutorial or a new one. It
might be too much to maintain both A Byte of Python and
one more text if we change tutorial(s).

Secondly, since Dive into Python goes beyond the core of
Python, with dependencies to third party stuff, I guess
it's more costly to maintain.

Perhaps it was a bad suggestion to include that. Thanks
for your feedback.

> I think the most important thing for a tutorial is a consistant style
> and a consistant idea of the user's capabilities.  This is easiest with
> a single maintainer, but requires constant dilligence and a subdued ego
> for a collaborative document.

On the other hand, one size doesn't fit all. Thus my suggestion
of two texts. With the 60+ links that I mentioned before, I don't
think the current way newbies are guided to tutorials is ideal.
There is too much to choose from and to little guidence for those
who try to figure out where to go. The information is also spread
out too much.

http://python.org/doc/
http://python.org/doc/2.4.2/ ==(?) http://docs.python.org/
http://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide + sub pages
http://www.python.org/doc/Intros.html
etc...

If the content in these pages were cleaned up significantly
(it's like the wardrobes at home--we can't keep all that old
stuff just because it isn't broken. Throw out the stuff which
isn't essential) I guess we could have less official stuff
(e.g. just one tutorial) and clear links to the others.

Perhaps a better approach would be that Dive ino Python was
one of a smaller set of external links to tutorials, in a
cleaned up set of web pages. At least, it's not a problem today
that there are too few online Python tutorials on the web.