[Tutor] Manuals/books

[Arthur Watts]

Guys,

	Having read the initial enquiry from Hermit and replies from Alan,
Remco and Rob, I thought I'd throw my two cents worth in. 

	Over the last 18 or so months, I have purchased each of these books
:
	
	Teach Yourself Python in 24 Hours
	Learning Python
	Programming Python
	Python Essential Reference
	Core Python Programming
	Python Annotated Archives

	I admit that the sheer novelty of seeing new Python books on the
shelves may have promoted some of these purchases.  I also have an extensive
library of other programming / IT titles, so I like to think I can tell a
good book from one which has been cobbled together just to cash in on a
language's popularity (just browse thru some of the Java titles out there
today ...). Of the titles I have listed, my favourites are the Essential
Reference and Core Python Programming. Learning Python is also very well
written, but I tend to be of the 'quickly show me the principle and a short
example and I'll take it from here' breed, and the other two are very good
for this. Reading books is no substitute for writing code and internalising
the results for yourself (a lot of Python's subtleties aren't evident from
simply scanning someone else's code ..), but they do give you a good basis
to work from. I have been forced to revisit the theory in Mark Lutz's books
on a couple of occasions when my impatience has gotten me onto trouble with
my implementation of a Python construct .. 

	Regardless of which book you buy, it is unlikely to cover everything
you need. What I would like to see is a Python version of the Perl Cookbook.
This is a fantastic example of a book written for practical, real-world
tasks, and I know it's the most heavily borrowed of any of my books. Given
that Perl has 'more than one way to do something', whilst Python usually
streamlines this to a single solution, our Cookbook should be somewhat
smaller :} I'd like to see a significant section of it dedicated to SysAdmin
type tasks : automating manual tasks is a big part of my day-to-day work.
Python network programming is another area of interest, and I'm sure that
other people on the list could suggest areas they'd like to see covered.
Perhaps ours would *NOT* be smaller than the Perl version after all !

	Finally, get Active Python. It ships with electronic reference doco,
and you can either search for a term or scan the index to cross-reference
material from the Global Module Index, the Language reference and other
Python doco. This won't teach you how to write Python code, but it will
minimise the time you spend scanning thru books in search of that elusive
Python implementation of your favourite C / Perl / whatever function.  	

Regards,

Arthur

Arthur Watts
Software Engineer GBST Automation
Global Banking & Securities Transactions

Telephone + 61 7 3331 5555
mailto: arthur.watts@gbst.com
www.gbst.com