[Novalug] Learning Python ???

James Ewing jecottrell3@comcast.net
Fri Mar 22 15:42:43 EDT 2013


The way I have learned almost every language since college*, where instructors would teach it, is by reading either

[1] "The Canonical Book" or in some cases by
[2] Reading the Man Page.

Of course it also helps to [3] write programs in it as well. Porting an existing program is a good choice.

I mention [2] for completeness sake; when I first learned Perl it was only a dozen or so pages.

The trick is finding "The Canonical Book". For C, it was clearly K&R. For others, look for a book named "Learning $LANGUAGE" or "Programming Language", which points to the O'Reilly books for at least Perl and Python. Programming Ruby is published by someone else. A/W?

Books with "Cookbook", "Recipes", or "Secrets" usually presume a familiarity with the language and tend to be focused on algorithms, perhaps a good second book.

I found the O'Reilly Programming Python book pretty good for teaching, but as a reference, it's hard to find things. And it's Huge now.

There is a series of books with Dark Purple Spines on Python...one covers the Language, one the Library...these look good.

IIRC, "Dive Into Python" is Free and you can read it Online...seems very friendly.

Go to the Public Library and check a few books out!

JIM

----- Original Message -----
From: "greg pryzby" <greg@pryzby.org>
To: "Novalug" <novalug@calypso.tux.org>
Sent: Friday, March 22, 2013 7:58:09 AM
Subject: [Novalug] Learning Python ???



I know the list every year or three talks about learning a new language or tool as a group. 

I have decided I want to learn Python? Has anyone successfully learned Python via self-study and if so, how did you do it? 




-- 

greg pryzby greg at pryzby dot org 
http://www.linkedin.com/in/gpryzby 

TWTR: gpryzby 
WEB: http://www.MakeRoomForArt.com/ 
BLOG: http://www.ryqyrmedia.com/ (son's) 

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