[Tutor] wanting to learn

[Python Nutter]

repost as didn't reply to list first time:

2008/6/12 Michael yaV <michael at yavarsity.com>:

> A little background on myself. I am a web designer so I am a Mac person. I
> have taught myself HTML and flash by reading manuals and a lot of trial and
> error over the last 11 years. I have always wanted to learn a language like
> php, asp, .net but I never took the time to learn them. I have recently
> found Python and  believe this is the language that I will "hang-my-hat-on"
> and learn.


I was web designer a while back, moved into security, then found
python, other than that almost the same path as yourself.


> I don't have any formal training in any coding language but I do have the
> "will" to learn.
> Since my background is web, I want to learn Python and how it relates to the
> web. I have been told that I need to learn and understand the basics in
> "standard/general" Python before I move onto something like "django" but
> really, how much Python do I need to know before I can head down the web
> path?


Yes you will need to learn some python but not to the level of taking
courses at college/uni straight off the get go. As you learn you will
determine what you need as you go on as far as how deep/level the
books and tutorials need to be.

Don't be like most and put off the super timple tutorials. I had a lot
of fun (after reading the Core python books out there) with the kids
tutorial because it was just fun to play around and learn some python
/ work with some python in the process. Honestly I didn't learn
anything because the core books taught me everything but if your brain
is on information overload then start here:

http://www.briggs.net.nz/log/writing/snake-wrangling-for-kids/

Once you tire of it you can move on to others (still freely available
on the web and just a google search away):

Non-Programmers Tutorial for Python

Official Python Documentation:

Text Processing in Python:

Python Reference Manual:

Python Imaging Library Handbook:

How to Think Like a Computer Scientist - Learning with Python:

Graphical Programming With Python - QT Edition:

Dive Into Python:


I had a lot of my first learning from the last, Dive Into Python, and
can recommend it, then for books at the bookstore, I bought them all
=) but if you only get one, its a tough choice, but wesley chuns core
python programming (whatever the latest edition) is a very good book
that will dig deep into every corner of python and expose it to you.

While you are finish up on these last tutorials and books you'll be
already at the level to start playing with django, the online
djangobook is free and will help you out a lot.


> Since I am on an intel/Mac which IDE should I be using? Which one will be

> robust enough to take me through my journey? I have started with IDLE.

IDEs are personal preference and likely to start great debates of
opinion back and forth and around again and again ad nauseum.

I've run vimtutor like the other poster suggested. However I just
didn't use it and got rusty and now will need to run it again. It did
not fit my brain well so I just never kept on using it. I know the
basics of how to open, edit, save. But all the formatting shortcut
keys which I will need are gone.

Instead for the command line, you can absolutely not beat iPython
shell. Its absolute amazing and you can find tons of free videos on
the web showing it off by googling on iPython Tutorial etc.

For GUI/IDEs I've tried them all from free to commercial. You can get
free versions (cut down in features) of commercial ones like Wing-IDE
(good but you need to run it in X11 on Mac) and Komodo IDE (my
personal fav), and lots of free ones that may fit your needs / mind
(SPE, Eric4, Eclipse with Pyton add-ins, Ulipad, etc. etc.)

By far my personal favourites to date will be iPython for terminal,
Komodo IDE for GUI IDE with Wing-IDE as a runner up.




The final decision you will have is stick with the Apple
complied/supplied Python which will lock you out of a few tiny
features and lock you into a version without updates for a very long
time (in other words until you buy a new version of OS X in most
cases). Or you can go to python.org and install the standard framework
python (this is my option perference and choice for all my Macs).

Other option would be to use Easy Install from PEAK developer tools
(google) to help install new modules from the web in egg format. Its a
personal choice, its not hard to install modules the standard way
(python setup.py install) in python and as a hint if you import the
sys module you can use it to tell you all the paths python searches
and in there it will show you where the directory is in your Mac for
site packages to install all your downloaded modules to.

Best of luck,
Take it slow and have fun (selecting python gave you the last one, you
have to do the first one).

PN