[Tutor] Life after beginner

[Kent Johnson]

Pat Martin wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have been reading about and playing with programming in python for 
> awhile now. I have most of the basics down. I know what a tuple is, I 
> know how to load modules, and I understand a fair amount of beginning 
> programming theory. I have written some scripts for both home and work 
> and have become fairly proficient at reading python code.
> 
> My question is, what next? Is there some intermediate tutorials or books 
> out there that I can start learning some real meat in the language? 
> Things that just writing a simple script I might miss. I really want to 
> learn about in depth programming and programming style but I am far from 
> an expert. But with all the languages I have learned (really touched on) 
> C, C++ perl, and python I seem to get to this point and then I am not 
> sure where to go from here. I want to be able to write large projects in 
> python and carry that experience over to the other languages as well. So 
> any insight would be welcome.

It sounds like you are looking for two different kinds of learning. 
First, you want a deeper knowledge of Python - what are the advanced 
features, how is Python really used? I found the book Python Cookbook to 
be a great intermediate step in my own learning - it is full of 
well-written, idiomatic Python code that shows you how experienced 
practitioners actually use the language.

Second, you want to get better at the craft of programming. This is 
harder than learning Python and takes practice. Look at books that are 
not specifically Python oriented. As well as the books Danny and Alan 
recommend, I have some favorites listed here:
http://personalpages.tds.net/~kent37/BookList.html

Kent