21–30 of 47 posts
I read the Python tutorial, and I have Python in a nutshell which I find is a great way to look something up and get a pretty good, detailed explanation on it.
I pretty much begin doing projects in it. Started with some basic web scrapers, then I built a site in Django. Yes, I was one of those bastards that was learning Python AND Django at the same time, but it worked out for me. I read the Python tutorial, and I have Python in a nutshell which I find is a great way to look something up and get a pretty good, detailed explanation on it.
Also I like Googling for "python tricks" as there are many gems hidden just waiting to be discovered. Here are a few examples:
http://kogs-www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~meine/python_tric...
http://www.siafoo.net/article/52
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/101268/hidden-features-of...
Read a bunch, get a project idea, start hacking on it to practice "muscle memory", use reference documentation a lot, go back and re-read -- picking up lots of info you missed the first time, get back to hacking. Keep cycling.
Many moons ago, I distinctly remember reading the 'Programming Perl' book 7 times before I finally felt like I understood what I was doing.
Python 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 inc…
O'Reilly's Programming Python is not bad, but it's not a great book, either for beginners or journeymen.
Python in a Nutshell is more suitable as reference book, although I suppose you could use it to learn Python. For a Python reference book, I found David Beazley's Python Essential Reference to be more informative and better organized: http://www.amazon.com/Python-Essential-Reference-Developers-...
As other people have mentioned, Guido's online tutorial is pretty good, and you don't really much else to start programming in Python: http://docs.python.org/tutorial/index.html
I'm always puzzled by people recommending Mark Pilgrim's Dive into Python. I don't find it a good choice for Python beginners.