On Thu, Jul 15, 2004 at 03:54:23PM +1000, Bill Bennett wrote:
> I want to teach myself Python. Can anyone recommend a
> good textbook, please?
I've heard good things about O'Reilly's _Learning Python_. There are some
very positive reviews on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596002815/103-2312080-4367835?v=glance
And a sample chapter on the O'Reilly site:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lpython2/
For a different angle on learning Python and its idioms, the _Python
Cookbook_ is pretty good. It has extensive discussion at the start of each
chapter and also for every recipe, you could learn a lot about Python,
although maybe at the risk of missing some basics. Anyway, Amazon reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596001673/103-2312080-4367835?v=glance
O'Reilly page, with sample chapter:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pythoncook/
There are lots of good resources on the web, though:
- Python.org's Tutorial:
http://docs.python.org/tut/tut.html
- Dive Into Python:
http://diveintopython.org/
(online version at http://diveintopython.org/toc/index.html)
- How to Think Like a Computer Scientist
http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy/
I'd strongly recommend trying these web tutorials first -- you'll probably
find they're good enough that you won't need to spend money on a book.
Regardless of what you learn from, you'll almost certainly need to regularly
refer to the Python Library Reference:
http://docs.python.org/lib/lib.html
Although I read it at file:///usr/share/doc/python/html/lib/index.html,
thanks to Debian's python-doc package.
> Also, there's a Python interest group somewhere, isn't
> there?
There was, although it hasn't been active for a long time. The meetings
were organised by Mary Gardiner, and no-one took over that work when she
started Honours. The talks should still be available on
http://pig.slug.org.au/.
-Andrew.
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