[AstroPy] Python Books for Beginners? {...Absolute}

[Wayne Watson]

UC Davis (Calif) uses Python for Absolute Beginners an an intro to 
engineering, math, and science majors.  It's about 3/4" thick.  Lutz's 
books are pretty decent, but IMO overloaded with material. His Learning 
is pretty thick, 1.+5"?? His Programming Python is 2 3/8" thick, near 
the limit of pages in a paperback.  Try searching for Alan Guth as an 
author. He's quite helpful on the Python Tutor mailing list, and 
contributes a pretty good amount to free internet pubs.  Also Core 
Python by Chun is used a lot for UC Extension classes, and community 
colleges. Note Chun and Lutz's books have an interesting internet 
hookup, a web site, anda 45 day free search access  to their books. I'm 
pretty sure they have all the code in their books there too.

On 2/8/2010 8:44 PM, Joe Harrington wrote:
> What I give my students is:
>
> Beginners:
>
>    ThinkPython (Formerly  "How to Think Like a Computer Scientist")
>    http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/
>
> Intermediate programmers:
>
>    A Byte of Python http://byteofpython.com/
>
> Advanced programmers, first time with Python:
>
>    Dive Into Python http://diveintopython.org/
>
> Data:
>
>    Perry's tutorial  http://www.scipy.org/wikis/topical_software/Tutorial
>
>    Python Scripting for Computational Science, HP Lantangen
>    http://folk.uio.no/hpl/scripting/index.html
>    http://www.springer.com/mathematics/numerical+and+computational+mathematics/book/978-3-540-73915-9
>    http://www.amazon.com/Python-Scripting-Computational-Science-Engineering/dp/3540435085
>
> The last is thorough, but long-winded, and uses the old conventions
> (from numpy import *).  Still, the content is otherwise excellent.
>
> --jh--
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>    

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