[Tutor] Learning Python ...Books

[Wayne Werner]

On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 5:22 AM, Stephen Farthing <squirrox at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> I am going to learn both Python and Ruby so I can see what suits me best.
> My ultimate aim is to do some open source cross platform development for my
> ham radio and robotics hobbies. One of the key requirements is to be able to
> control hardware, via USB, using a GUI.
>

Using the pyserial module: http://pyserial.sourceforge.net/, and depending
on how advanced you want to get, Tkinter, pyGTK, wxPython, or PyQT (as the
main choices) are great ways to do such a thing. I've used pyserial with my
Arduino under Ubuntu and it worked great.


> What I was wondering is if there is a Python equivalent to "The C
> Programming language" by Kernighan and Richie which is the best text on
> programming i have ever read.
>

 This post:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/947942/advanced-python-programming-book-like-effective-c
has
several books. I've heard that Wesley Chun's book (who also happens to
contribute here every so often ;) Core Python Programming is a great one.

I'm a big tutorial reader - reading tutorials with plenty of examples is how
I learn best - I've done a lot of eBooks. One great resource that
surprisingly few people mention (mainly because it's "for kids" - that just
means it's a lot more entertaining :) is Snake Wrangling for Kids:
http://www.briggs.net.nz/log/writing/snake-wrangling-for-kids/

It covers all the basic stuff that's easy to blitz through if you're
familiar with programming, and then towards the end it gets a little into
programming with Tkinter.

Anyhow, HTH, good luck, and welcome!
If you get stuck, there are plenty of people here willing to help (which you
may find par for the course when dealing with Pythonistas).
-Wayne
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