[Tutor] python virgin

[John Purser]

Morning Doug,

Python is a great language to get started in programming with.  I wish I had begun with it.

To get that window to hang around a while try adding "raw_input()" without the quotes as the last line of your script.  It will hold the window open until you hit enter.

You can also run your scripts from the command prompt.  Then any messages will remain on the screen.  Especially handy for bug hunting.

You might want to wander out to www.python.org (note the .org domain or you get a VERY different site) and look at the documentation.  You can find a list of resources for non-programmers at:
http://www.python.org/topics/learn/non-prog.html

There's a very good tutorial written by GvR himself as well as a lot of links to other helpful sites.  There's also the O'Reilly book "Learning Python" which is a good place to start as well.  

And recently I came across this site:
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld/

In short there are a lot of internet sites out there as well as this mailing list to get you off the ground.

Good luck and happy hacking.

John Purser

-----Original Message-----
From: Doug Gentry [mailto:Doug.Gentry at comcast.net]
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2004 11:29 AM
To: tutor at python.org
Subject: [Tutor] python virgin


Heck, I'm a programming virgin too. I was browsing the net the other day and ran across a site about active  state python. I had the "old Python loaded on here so I removed it and installed the new version on my XP computer.
 
I'm trying to find some sites that has some info about how to use it. I think I've found a couple but the instructions in there seem to be for the older python I was using before.
 
i.e.; click on file and then new window? Mine has File/new and then a choice of script or grep. I kind of figured that script is the same thing as what they wanted in the new window. 
 
 Also when I opened notepad and did the little exercise of hello world and saved as hello.py  I went back and ran it. I get a real quick flash of a cmd box running but that's it.
 
I suppose because it's RUNNING the program hello.py and there really is nothing to see, except HELLO WORLD for a brief 1/60th of a second?
 
So I guess my question should be. Does anyone know of a good website to go to learn this?
 
Also I'd like to thank all you wonderful people for doing this tutoring thing. It's so nice to meet a group of people that have really nice intentions of helping people and learning!
 
 
Thanks so much for being there!
 
Doug