Ask YC: What is the best Python book for a beginner? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask YC: What is the best Python book for a beginner?

#21

Post by mathogre » Sat, Feb 23, 2008, 1:00 PM UTC

mronge wrote: post #3

I found Learning Python + the python tutorial by Guido on python.org to be a great way to start

Learning Python is an excellent book. It is what I found most useful for learning the language. I bought and read many books, and this one is the best I found. Conversely, Programming Python sucks, even though both are authored by the same person. (LP is co-authored.)

The language docs from python.org are invaluable as a reference, which includes the tutorial. I invariably download the html tarball and put it on any machine I use for python programming.

Re: Ask YC: What is the best Python book for a beginner?

#22

Post by ptn » Sat, Feb 23, 2008, 1:24 PM UTC

ptn wrote: post #14

juanpablo wrote: post #8

"Beginning Python - From Novice to Professional"

I'll back you up there. It's what I'm using and it is wonderful except for one thing: it doesn't have that much real and difficult examples throughout, only some sprinkled here and there and the rest of the scripts are nonsense.

P.S That is before the last chapters in which the books gets really interesting. But it'd be nice to have those projects in between chapters as you learn instead of at the end of everything.

Re: Ask YC: What is the best Python book for a beginner?

#23

Post by manvsmachine » Sat, Feb 23, 2008, 8:50 PM UTC

When I started, I read "How to Think Like A Computer Scientist: Learning With Python" Since then the revised edition has had a draft out, " How to Think Like a (Python) Programmer". This series is really good at getting the basics down clearly and quickly (I read through it in under a week). After that, Dive into Python fleshed things out more for me.

http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/

Re: Ask YC: What is the best Python book for a beginner?

#24

Post by krishna2 » Sun, Feb 24, 2008, 2:51 AM UTC

If you already know any other (good) programming language, then "Essential Python Reference" by David Beazley is the way to go. For starters, if you are wondering, this is how I would do it in X, I wonder how to do this in Python - this book would get you the answer the fastest. There is also a detailed introduction (about 70 pages or so, IIRC) that will get you started as well.