Good introductory book?

[pruebauno at latinmail.com]

On Dec 3, 9:44 am, "Ken D'Ambrosio" <ken.dambro... at segway.com> wrote:
> Hi, all.  I'm getting ready to do some projects in Python, and I've cut my
> teeth a little bit, but I've found the "Learning|Programming Python" books
> from O'Reilly to be more-or-less useless (to my surprise -- I'm usually an
> O'Reilly fan).  I really, really like "Python Essential Reference", but
> it's -- well, more of a reference than an intro.  So, an introductory text
> that actually assumes some previous programming experience (as opposed to
> "Learning Python" which must be the most slowly-paced programming book
> ever) would be terrific.
>
> Thanks for your suggestions!
>
> -Ken

I had the same experience as you had and almost gave up on Python. I
had programmed in other languages before and found the Programming
Python book very tedious to read. I just wanted to learn the syntax
and library to start writing my own stuff. Luckily, I found Guido's 12
page tutorial (http://www.python.org/doc/2.5.2/tut/tut.html) and that
plus the online library reference and Google was everything I ever
needed since then. That said I looked at O'Reilly's "Python in a
Nutshell" and I thought it was really good. It is a mix between
introduction, language and library reference. I should have gotten
that instead of Learning/Programming when I started and I probably
would have been much happier.