A newbie's doubt

[Chris Angelico]

On Thu, Jan 7, 2016 at 2:20 PM, Henrique Correa <habyte at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is Python's Tutorial (by Guido) a good and complete reference for the
> language? I mean, after reading it, should I have a good basis on Python?
>
> I've came from js and php, and already know the very basics of py.
>
> Thank you!

If by "good and complete" you mean "enough to write code in", then
yes, I would say it is.

If you mean "enough to write applications that you can sell for
money", then it's probably insufficient; you'll want to also learn a
few libraries, possibly including third-party ones like Flask/Django
(to write web applications) or numpy/pandas (to write computational
code) or matplotlib (to crunch numbers and make graphs).

If, on the other hand, you mean "enough to understand how Python works
internally", then no, it's not. It's not meant to go into that kind of
detail. But you don't need to know that anyway.

I would recommend going through that tutorial. You'll get a decent
handle on how Python works. As a general rule, Python's object model
is similar to what you'll know from JS; the scoping rules are
different (instead of "var x;" to declare that x is local, you would
have "global x" to declare that x is global - but you need declare
only those globals that you assign to, not those you reference). As
you go through it, write down some notes of everything that interests
or confuses you; once you've completed the tutorial, go through your
notes again. Some of what you've written down will now make perfect
sense, and you can delete it; some will still confuse you, but you'll
understand more of *why* it confuses you. So then you come back here
to python-list with the bits that confuse you, and we'll be happy to
explain stuff!

ChrisA