[Chicago] How did you learn Python?

[Clyde Forrester]

1. Self-taught. I've always had trouble with courses. ADD. Odd learning 
style.
1bis. (Since several people have started mentioning books in answer to 
this question.) I was fluent in various BASIC dialects, then learned C, 
then learned Perl. Now I'm trying to learn Python, Ruby, Java, C++, etc. 
ad nausium. I like the O'Reilly "Learning [foo]" books. I supplement 
them with random site results from Google searches.
2. Not in the last couple of decades. I'm too much of a hands-on, 
practical learner. I tend to want to learn about what really, actually 
works, rather than learning to regurgitate pat answers or vague 
theories. I don't like to toe the party line, or settle on the one 
"true" brand of beer/automobile/OS/language/browser/editor/whatever. 
Sorry if I'm ranting.
3. Graduated in back in the olden days. ('82). Haven't felt comfortable 
going back to that pressure-cooker.

I've started playing around with various "fasta" (genetics) files, 
counting nucleotide bases, looking for motifs, that sort of thing. I 
generally try something simple in Perl, and then try it in Python, Ruby, 
etc. What I've learned so far involves text-file-in, summary on screen. 
I also have some text-file-in, text-file-out applications I play with. 
File conversion used to be 90% of my job. I'm also trying to do 
text-file-in, pretty analysis picture on screen. For that I expect to 
start with Java, and then see which other languages give me a path of 
least resistance.

James Snyder wrote:
> This discussion makes me curious about something though...
>
> 1. How many people here started as self-taught Pythonistas vs. 
> learning it from some sort of course/workshop/guided instruction?
> 2. Regardless of how you got started, have you taken some 
> instruction?  Was it useful/helpful?
> 3. Did any of the educational institutions you went to offer any 
> python-related classes?