Hi Frederico: When I was learning Python, I was still lucky enough to have an online technical bookstore a la Quantumbooks.com (in fact, later owned by Quantum) in the physical neighborhood, and was on good terms with the owners and warehouse folks. End result was, I often got their "blemished" books--a page turned down, slightly skritched bindings, etc., of stuff they got shipped to them and couldn't resell--most publishers would just say to give them away or use them for doorstops, since they weren't interested in paying return shipping for them.
"Give them away" is where I came in. :) I got boxes of books--some on subject matter that I'd either never really care about or rather have the time or environment to (Delphi, anyone?) or things that I was motivated into actually learning about that I otherwise wouldn't (PL/SQL comes to mind). Now, the answer to your question. Through this distro, I ended up with *The Quick Python Book* by Vern Ceder back when it was first released. About 6 months after I got the book, I had to put together a software deployment and distribution platform that I decided to write in Python. As for the book, the first edition was a bit limited in its version compatibility (it was stuck at Py 2.3 iirc). I'm looking at the second edition in Safari, which actually covers Python 3, which you may not care about for immediate requirements (Py 3 is kind of like Perl 6 in being utterly next-gen, but is a much less integration-daunting than Perl 6, as in it may show up in intermediate usage in the mainstream in the foreseeable future :). Anyways, the QPB was quite good at working me forward at a quick enough pace to assume I had a brain (or a background in Perl, which is sometimes equivalent to having a brain). There are others which might be as good, but it's what I had, and it worked for me, so I don't think it will steer you wrong. In particular, however, don't assume that just because it's > 1000 pp., that Mark Lutz's *Programming Python* (O'Reilly) is a good book for this sort of thing. I don't know what it's good for--it describes mostly a lot of very useful-to-essential modules and modular frameworks, but those are better and more practically documented elsewhere (usually in the context of application use cases where you're actually going to use the damned things), and PP is perenially out of date. Hope this helps! Regards, Wayne From: Federico Lucifredi <[email protected]> To: L-boston-pm PM <[email protected]>, Date: 01/26/2012 08:16 PM Subject: [Boston.pm] The second P Sent by: [email protected] Okay guys, I haven't gotten a definite answer on this when I asked a couple of years back, so I'l ask again - flog me as you may :) I have a need to properly learn a certain other "P" language, and I do not mean PHP either. For Perl, my favorite "concise" summary is the first chapter of Damian's OO Perl book. What about the other, unnamed, language? Guido has written up a short language on the book, but what else has proven popular with people who already knew Perl to expand their range of dynamic languages - without reading hundred of pages? Thanks -Federico PS: I promise to flog myself if you guys actually come up with a good suggestion! _________________________________________ -- "'Problem' is a bleak word for challenge" - Richard Fish (Federico L. Lucifredi) - flucifredi at acm.org - GnuPG 0x4A73884C _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list [email protected] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list [email protected] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
