On Friday 05 October 2007 08:13, John Penney wrote:
> Thanks for getting this off the ground, Giacomo. Your Django
> presentation was very helpful and got the basics across very well -
> cheers!
I really would've liked to have made it there myself, but as previously
mentioned I couldn't be around. C'est le vie.
> I'm not sure myself whether I'd make a fortnightly meeting - my
> preference would be for a monthly meeting (at least until we've got it
> off the ground more).
I think one social & one technical is a really good way of dealing with that
myself. I don't know if I'd come every time, but I think its a good way of
encouraging things :-)
> On a completely different topic, FYI, the ACCU general mailing list has
> an interesting thread at the moment about "Books and language for the
> first time programmer". There's considerable support for Python as a
> first language, you'll be pleased to hear! Interestingly however,
> no-one's been able to recommend a book for the novice programmer that
> uses Python.
I make a point of buying books for beginners (as well as not :), even though
I've not really been a beginner for some time, largely because I like finding
out new ways of explaining things.
The best book really depends on the person, so the following is pretty biased,
but hopefully of use.
* For a complete novice, focussing on fun is a good idea - as a result I
think the book "Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner" is a really
good one. Largely because it focusses on games as its starting point. For
example rather than having "Hello World" as it's first example program,
it uses the other more well known phrase "Game Over" :-)
Price: Cheap for computer books - about a tenner
* For someone who's done computer studies at GCSE or A-Level (which
apparently, shockingly, doesn't contain programming anymore), then the
book "How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python" is a
really good book. I've used this in the past with one individual, then
gave him some exercises the following week, and he seemed to pick things
up quickly that way. (The exercises we got him to do morphed into this:
http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/MiniAxon)
Price: free download as PDF & HTML
* Novice to python, but experienced - "Dive Into Python" has lots of people
raving about it. I didn't particularly like it myself, but I know people
do.
Price: 16-30 GBP depending on where you buy it from(!)
* "Beginning Python: From Novice To Professional" - Personally, I think
this is probably the best of the bunch overall.
* Good books for people beyond novice IMO:
* Python pocket guide. (These books are what I think "nutshell" books
should be!)
* Game Programming With Python - the generic GUI part of this book I
think is a mistake, but many of the issues it covers are good and
highly general to many python systems. (unlike an "advanced" book on
any specific library)
* I don't _ever_ recommend "Learning Python". As a book, its the one python
book I regret buying because I found it awful. Indeed, it single-bookedly
put me off using python for 4 years, something I massively regret. Some
people rave about it though, so your mileage may vary.
Price: Potentially drive you away from Python
* Likewise, I've not found the following _particularly_ useful, but don't
regret buying:
* Python in a nutshell. It's too large to be useful IMO.
* Python Cookbook. Again, it's a nice book, but for some reason simply
as useful as the perl cookbook was when I got that.
Regards,
Michael.
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