Just start working on a project and figure things out as you go.
What did you use to teach yourself Python?
11–20 of 47 posts
Re: What did you use to teach yourself Python?
#12Thing with Python is that it combines a shallow learning curve with very quick payback. You can use it as a glorified shell script if you want, and very quickly get something useful done, then anything you learn will have an immediate application to your next project. That's how I got into it. Then you go back and realize, hey, this for loop would be better as a list comprehension, these functions would work better together if I put them in a class, and refine your code.
Re: What did you use to teach yourself Python?
#13Python.
Re: What did you use to teach yourself Python?
#14Idiomatic Python: http://python.net/~goodger/projects/pycon/2007/idiomatic/han...
Probably the best complement to the aforementioned tutorials. Dive into Python is good but i hate the examples he makes.
Re: What did you use to teach yourself Python?
#15Dive into Python: http://diveintopython.org/
And then I bought Python in a Nutshell, which covers a lot of things in more depth, with decent examples. Recommended.
Re: What did you use to teach yourself Python?
#16The activestate download "http://www.activestate.com/Products/activepython/index.mhtml" for windows came with a nice helpfile which bundled a couple of tutorials, dive into python, library reference and lots more. A good place to start.
Re: What did you use to teach yourself Python?
#17Python tutorial: http://docs.python.org/tutorial/index.html And library reference: http://docs.python.org/library/index.html
Same for me.
Sometimes I refer to http://effbot.org/pyref/
Re: What did you use to teach yourself Python?
#18Python tutorial: http://docs.python.org/tutorial/index.html And library reference: http://docs.python.org/library/index.html
These are great. The Python tutorial is very readable.
You could use these side by side with any decent university course that you can find online. Here is a link to Caltech's introductory Python course, with exercises posted that ramp up in difficulty while surveying most of the Python basics. http://www.cs.caltech.edu/courses/cs11/material/python/index...
And here is MIT's intro course on Python as well. Theirs includes the solutions too. http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Compute...
Re: What did you use to teach yourself Python?
#19I was put onto a Python project at work so I started with the best quick reference I could find (wikipedia!) and then went from there.
Started at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_syntax_and_semantics
Found most other details on here: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/ http://www.python.org/doc/
There's some good online tutorials to ease into some of the trickier details like metaclasses and descriptors.
I was already coding Ruby before this (and some LISP before that) so the whole dynamic language thing was familiar enough I could get away with mostly references. Your milage may vary :)
Re: What did you use to teach yourself Python?
#20http://www.pythonchallenge.com/
I'll second the python challenge. Unlike Project Euler, this challenge required the participant to rely on finding and using some python libraries (for imaging, networking, compression, etc.) to solve the puzzles. So, not only are you researching the language to figure it out, but you're actively engaged in self-directed research to find out how to complete real tasks with python.
I've also read the "Dive Into Python" book, but that was equivalent to reading a book about an instrument without actually holding or playing one.