[Tutor] hitting a wall (not a collision detection question :P)

[David]

Michael wrote:
> I have virtually no background in programming.. I'm currently teaching 
> myself python using the following books:
> 
> Beginning Python - From Novice to Professional by Magnus Lie Hetland
> Beginning Python by Peter Norton et. al.
> Making Use of Python by Rashi Gupta
> Learning Python  by Mark Lutz
> 
> as well as a variety of tutorials I picked up off the web. I'm using 
> v.2.5.2, and I'm trying to upgrade to 2.6.2, but I'm running 
> Linux/Ubuntu so the upgrade is giving me problems. The main reason I'm 
> not using 3.1 is because all my books talk about 2.x.
> 
> Ultimately, my goal is to delve into pygame and make some games and 
> maybe some multimedia applications. I'd like my first project to be an 
> old-school style RPG (e.g. Final Fantasy), as something with such simple 
> graphics and interface would be a good benchmark of where I want to go 
> from there.
> 
> I've been progressing steadily, until now. At this point, I have a 
> pretty solid understanding of strings, integers, tuples, lists, 
> dictionaries, etc. and everything up to functions vs. methods and the 
> basics of classes and OOP. This is where I'm hitting a wall. It's at 
> this point the all the books go off in different directions and I'm not 
> sure a) what I'm learning, b) why I'm learning it, and c) how this is 
> going to help me get to my goals. I'm not really even understanding much 
> of what these books are talking about at this point anyway. It's like a 
> few chapters after "Classes and OOP" were torn out of all of them.
> 
> So, I'm just wondering what I should be doing at this point. Sorry for 
> the vague question, but I'm pretty lost right now and this is about as 
> specific as I can be. Thanks in advance for any help.
> 
> Michae
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Tutor maillist  -  Tutor at python.org
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor

I am new to Python and never programed before. What has helped me is to 
think of something you want to automate, as an example I visit a few 
different sites each day to view new bugs reported. I made a program 
that emails me the differences from what I have gathered before. I take 
a piece of paper and write down the steps that I think this will take 
then start doing small pieces at a time and check each one to make sure 
it works, plus this gives me encouragement to continue.
-david
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