Guidelines for a fresh starter

[Anna]

On Fri, 11 Oct 2002 03:19:31 -0500, Alex Martelli wrote:

> Jeff Epler wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, 10 Oct 2002 20:13:04 +0200, "rodion" <rodion at wanadoo.es> wrote:
>>> >have to understand what i read so i would like someone to recommend
>>> >books, url's, etc...where i can make a start.
>>> 
>> On Thu, Oct 10, 2002 at 09:01:23PM +0200, Rhymes wrote:
>>> one above all: http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld/
>> 
>> Is this text really very good?  For instance, in the section "What's in
>> a name" (the second one I read), the author confuses the "print"
>> statement/keyword with a "'builtin-scope' name":
>>     def spam(X):
>>         #...
>>         if Z > W:
>>             # print is a 'builtin-scope' name
>>             print "2 x X is greater than X + 5"
> 
> Yes, I think it's good, although it's surely not perfect.  I think I
> understand the author's general problem: it's devilishly hard to express
> yourself WITH total precision, AND at the same time still be totally
> clear and helpful to newbies -- there's quite a bit of tradeoff.

I must concur with your assessment of Alan.Gauld.

As a newbie myself (I learned (and forgot) Pascal 20+ years ago), I was
happy to see that Gauld avoided the most common problem I find in
technical intros: using so much unexplained jargon (or circular
explanations in more jargon) that, if you knew what the author was talking
about, you'd know too much for the book to be any value.

For those of us who are *not* already C programmers, or Java scripters,
or... it's nice to have something that walks through step by step into the
territory, with enough examples and exercises to keep you from getting too
overwhelmed or too bored.

Yes - it's not perfect. There are assumptions made, over-simplifications,
and many places he skims where I would prefer to dive. But, all in
all,it's a solid, straightforward intro to a rather complicated subject.
Of course, I could be biased - I have an excellent tutor to fall back on
when I don't understand a concept... or want to go to a deeper level of
understanding on a particular topic.

Anna