Books to begin learning Python

[Samir]

> > There's lots of good books to read, including a few online ones. A lot
> > of people like "Dive Into Python" (http://diveintopython.org/). If you
> > want LOTS of information and some good code examples, Lutz's
> > "Programming Python 3rd Ed" is great.
>
> I have the 2nd edition. Has the 3rd edition been rewritten so that all
> of its code will be valid in Python 3? I'd prefer not to buy Python
> books that will become obsolete.

As a relative newcomer to Python, I found that "Dive Into Python" was
initially out of my league.  It's written assuming that you have a
good understanding of basic Python concepts.  Since I didn't have this
initial mastery of the language, I didn't find it useful.

Now that I've been working with the language for awhile, however, I do
come back and refer to it from time to time.

Some good online tutorials that I found really helpful include:
(1) Python Tutorial
    http://docs.python.org/tut/tut.html

(2) A Byte of Python
    http://www.ibiblio.org/swaroopch/byteofpython/read/

(3) How to Think Like a Computer Scientist
    http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/thinkCSpy/html/index.html

Incidentally, you can find documentatio for Python v3.0 at the
official Python site here:
http://docs.python.org/dev/3.0/

I hope that helps.  Good luck!

Samir