[Edu-sig] re: Slighly OT: O'Reilly article [other resources for newbies?]

[Terry Hancock]

On Saturday 19 October 2002 01:27 pm, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > Would it be good to put Useless Python on the Newbies page too?
> >
> >     http://uselesspython.com
>
> Sorry, it doesn't really strike me as a strong newbie resource.

I respectfully disagree -- I think I'm still enough of a newbie to
speak from personal impressions. I've spent less time there than
I would like, but what I did spend was very pleasant.

It goes a long way to showing the sorts of things one can do
with Python, which is one of the first things a newbie wants to
know: "Why should I learn this? What's it good for?"  Seeing
easy or compact solutions for problems which seem hard
is a great builder of confidence in the language.  Furthermore,
the site is full of ideas about how to tackle a problem, which
is something else newbies are often looking for.

Now, I'm not a newbie to programming, but only to Python
(and since I've been at it a year or so, I'm not so much of a
newbie anymore), but I found it very invigorating, if a bit
misnamed ;-). The light humor, though, makes it a lot less
threatening.

Cheers,
Terry

--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks  http://www.anansispaceworks.com