[Tutor] Which version to start with?

[Lewis Chuang]

As someone who learned (about) programming by copying and pasting code, 
I really appreciate," Python for software design - how to think like a 
computer scientist" by Allen Downey. It really talks you through the 
workflow of programming, rather than just give you a long list of things 
that you can do if you learn to program in X.

A legally free manuscript is available here:
http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/

Best wishes,
Lewis

Wayne wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 7:59 AM, Ken G. <beachkid at insightbb.com 
> <mailto:beachkid at insightbb.com>> wrote:
>
>     I am just starting on Python 2.6.2 on Ubuntu 9.04 and I am
>     slightly confused with the numerous tutorials and books available
>     for learning the language.  Is there any good recommendation for a
>     good but easy tutorial on the Internet to learn Python?
>
>     Ken
>
>
> Alan has a good tutorial:
> www.alan-g.me.uk/ <http://www.alan-g.me.uk/>
>
> I haven't read it, but a lot of others on here are big fans of 
> Wesley's book:
> http://python.net/crew/wesc/cpp/
>
> There are several other sources and tutorials around, those are just 
> the first two that popped into my mind :)
>
> I kinda hopped around to various tutorials, especially since I've 
> programmed before (and am a CS major), so a lot of the concepts were a 
> bit easier for me to grasp.
>
> Alan's tutorial does a great job explaining a lot of concepts behind 
> programming in general and ties them to programming in python.
>
> HTH,
> Wayne
>
>  
>
>
>     wesley chun wrote:
>>     On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 2:24 PM, Nick Hird <nrhird at gmail.com> <mailto:nrhird at gmail.com> wrote:
>>       
>>>     What is the best version of python to start out with? I see some
>>>     discussions on the net about not going to 3.1 but staying with the 2.x
>>>     releases. But then i see that 3.1 is better if your just starting.
>>>         
>>     greetings nick!
>>
>>     ironically, i just gave a talk on this very subject yesterday afternoon(!)
>>     http://www.siliconvalley-codecamp.com/Sessions.aspx?OnlyOne=true&id=227 <http://www.siliconvalley-codecamp.com/Sessions.aspx?OnlyOne=true&id=227>
>>
>>     basically, if you're starting from scratch as a hobby with no
>>     pre-existing code, then learning 3.x is okay. however, since most of
>>     the world still runs on Python 2, most printed and online books and
>>     tutorials are still on Python 2, and the code at most companies using
>>     Python is still on version 2, i would recommended any release 2.6 (and
>>     newer). the reason is because 2.6 is the first release that has
>>     3.x-specific features backported to it, so really, it's the first
>>     Python 2 release that lets you start coding against a 3.x interpreter.
>>
>>     you can learn Python using 2.6+ then absorb the differences and move
>>     to Python 3.x quite easily.
>>
>>     hope this helps!
>>     -- wesley
>>
>>       
>
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