Hello. I use SAS on a daily basis and it has peaked my interest in
learning other programming languages. Are there any good
websites/online books that can help someone go from zero knowledge of
python and programming to beginner level through exercises?
I have been using SAS for 13 years, and although I also used Visual
Basic and Perl, I still thought that SAS had something to offer as a
data manipulation and programming environment. But then I was introduced
to Python about 4 years ago, and it was a road to Damascus experience -
the scales fell from my eyes and I realised just how sprawling and laden
with historical baggage the SAS suite really is - a real dog's
breakfast (mostly effective, but incredibly inelegant). And then there
is the annual cost of licenses...
Anyway, there are now many good books on Python, and several free
tutorials and more extensive introductions (such as "Dive into Python"),
but as a starting place, I very strongly recommend "Learning Python" by
Lutz and Ascher, published by O"Reilly. My son calls it "the rat book".
See
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lpython2/
--
Tim C
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