Byte of Python: http://www.swaroopch.com/notes/Python Dive into Python: http://diveintopython.org/ Both great and free books.
seconding Dive into Python.
(I'll have to check out the first one)
What did you use to teach yourself Python?
31–40 of 47 posts
Re: What did you use to teach yourself Python?
#32http://www.pythonchallenge.com/
Really fun and challenging projects from image and audio processing to network programming. Each level is a computing puzzle which you must solve to progress to the next level. Very helpful forum too, which you will be needing since you'd have no idea about the techniques (the relevant python libraries and such) involved at the start.
Re: What did you use to teach yourself Python?
#33"How to think like a computer scientist" is a text for teaching you programming concepts using python as a framework.. From what I've seen of it, it's pretty good.
http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/thinkpython.html
If you know all the programming concepts well - then go with Dive Into Python
Re: What did you use to teach yourself Python?
#34A very good book is Core Python Programming by Wesley Chun.
: http://www.amazon.com/Core-Python-Programming-2nd/dp/0132269...
But it is not for total beginners.
Re: What did you use to teach yourself Python?
#35Two things: lots of risk and the O'Reilly book, "Learning Python."
I work for a company and was running a research project in air traffic control worth ~$400K. I was the principal investigator. We were going to create a tool that would redesign the airspace boundaries managed by a controller or controller team. At the time, I programmed in C, Awk, and a little Perl. I'd used Python at the command line, but had never programmed in it. I knew however it was the language we needed. I committed to it, and my partner agreed to it. We both learned Python on our own and the project succeeded. It had to succeed. If it didn't, we were in lots of trouble. We had company VPs watching us.
The Learning Python book is superior to the Programming Python book. While both are written with the same author, the Learning book is far more readable.
My favorite ongoing resource today is the documentation that comes with Python. I have a copy of it installed on the Linux box at work, and on my Macs at home. It is hands-down the best quick reference for the language.
Re: What did you use to teach yourself Python?
#36Actually I used "the" tutorial at python.org. But simultaneously I dived into it by writing web apps (which I was learning as well). In fact I wanted to learn writing webapps (and man there is so much more left aaaaah) and it came down to a choice between ruby and python. I went for python. And no, I am not going into why I chose one over the other!
So I just learnt it by writing several simple apps (thanks to django) and subscribing to a whole bunch of blogs to learn tips and tricks incrementally over time.
Re: What did you use to teach yourself Python?
#37If you're new to Python and play games like Counter-Strike: Source and Team Fortress 2, try out EventScripts to customize the game:
http://python.eventscripts.com
Re: What did you use to teach yourself Python?
#38I bought Beginning Python from APress, read through it in a day or two, then just started hacking. From then on the only things I used were the official Python library reference and any existing code I happened to be hacking on. Occasionally I'd look up articles on the Web about something I wanted to learn more about (decorators, meta-classes, etc.)
The folks in #python are also very helpful.
Re: What did you use to teach yourself Python?
#39I used a now-out-of-print book by Aaron Watters: Internet Programming with Python. http://www.amazon.com/Internet-Programming-Python-Aaron-Watt...
Python totally changed my world.
Re: What did you use to teach yourself Python?
#40The ipython shell (http://ipython.scipy.org/) was great to experiment and learn with, and it's a huge productivity boost every day. It's where I do most of my work. It would be very hard for anyone going back to the plain python shell after trying ipython.