Book recommendation

[Madhusudan Singh]

Hi

I am trying to teach myself Python. I have extensive prior programming
experience in Fortran, a little in C/C++, Pascal, etc.

So far, I have been reading online tutorials at www.python.org and a book I
found at the library - Martin Brown's The Complete Reference Python. Is
there a standard classic book to learn from that I could buy ?

Say something like Metcalf and Reid's Fortran 90/95 Explained or Kernighan
and Ritchie's The C Programming Language.

 

[StvB]

There are four books I always recommend:
1. The must-learn-Python-from-this-book book that I recommend is Diving
Into Python by Mark Pilgrim

1a. Then, you think of your own small/medium-size project, and start
writing it.

Now that you have been introduced in a friendly and painfree way,
from Diving Into Python, and you're pumped emotionally
from actually writing Python(1a) , start reading:

2. O'Reilly's Learning Python, to really drive in the
language syntax and features, and have a
comprehensive, well-organized book on every part of Python,
ready to check back to, when you need a lot of help on a particular
topic.
Just read it front and back, when you get the chance.

And these two books are a must, IMO
3. Python in a Nutshell
4. Python Cookbook <-- avail online too, though

 

[Paul Robson]

I am trying to teach myself Python. I have extensive prior programming
experience in Fortran, a little in C/C++, Pascal, etc.

So far, I have been reading online tutorials at www.python.org and a book I
found at the library - Martin Brown's The Complete Reference Python. Is
there a standard classic book to learn from that I could buy ?

Say something like Metcalf and Reid's Fortran 90/95 Explained or Kernighan
and Ritchie's The C Programming Language.

Hi there Madhusudan

There's a couple of brief introductions worth reading ; one is by the
language's creator Guido van Rossum, and the other by a chap called
Swaroop (A byte of Python I think it's called). Both of these are quick
read introduction type things.

A most entertaining and completely backward book is "Dive into Python"
(all these are free downloads but you can buy the latter as a book) which
has the approach where each section starts of with a relatively
complex working chunk of Python code, then pulls it apart and shows you
how all the bits work, and explains the various concepts as you go along.

Once you've done that, if you want some useful bits of coding just to get
the feel of it, try answering some of the Perl or Ruby Quiz-of-the-week
questions (archives are online search for Perl|Ruby quiz of the week).

None of the tasks are more than a page or two of python, but it's a quick
way of getting a feel for the language.

The other thing that's handy to have to hand is the Quick Reference which
is about 20 or so pages and handy for a quick look up.

There are many IDEs and Editors about from the quick and dirty through to
full IDEs (which personally I find too much of a clutter). I personally
like Scite which is the former.

Remember, for i in range(100): print "Murali chucks"

 

[Larry Bates]

If you are running on Windows, "Python Programming on Win32"
is a must buy/read.

I also liked "Python Bible" a lot.

Larry Bates

 

[Madhusudan Singh]

Hi there Madhusudan

Hi

There's a couple of brief introductions worth reading ; one is by the
language's creator Guido van Rossum, and the other by a chap called
Swaroop (A byte of Python I think it's called). Both of these are quick
read introduction type things.

A most entertaining and completely backward book is "Dive into Python"
(all these are free downloads but you can buy the latter as a book) which
has the approach where each section starts of with a relatively
complex working chunk of Python code, then pulls it apart and shows you
how all the bits work, and explains the various concepts as you go along.

"Dive into Python" seems to be the favorite so far in this NG.

Once you've done that, if you want some useful bits of coding just to get
the feel of it, try answering some of the Perl or Ruby Quiz-of-the-week
questions (archives are online search for Perl|Ruby quiz of the week).

perl-qotw was interesting and language agnostic (If perl can do something,
so should Python - not that I know much perl). I will look into it on a
regular basis when I get my bearings.

None of the tasks are more than a page or two of python, but it's a quick
way of getting a feel for the language.

The other thing that's handy to have to hand is the Quick Reference which
is about 20 or so pages and handy for a quick look up.
Yep.


There are many IDEs and Editors about from the quick and dirty through to
full IDEs (which personally I find too much of a clutter). I personally
like Scite which is the former.

I use emacs for everything except authoring webpages. An operating system
disguised as an editor

Remember, for i in range(100): print "Murali chucks"

The above is syntactically correct only if you did not install
python-larry

 

[Madhusudan Singh]

If you are running on Windows, "Python Programming on Win32"
is a must buy/read.

Thanks for your response. Fortunately, I inhabit a windows free world

I also liked "Python Bible" a lot.

I will look into it.