a hobbyist's dilemma

[Enigma Curry]

I would second the vote for pythonchallenge. It's what taught me
Python.

The amazing thing about the python challenge is by the time your done
with it, you've gotten through a very large and diverse sampling of the
python docs. It really gave me a good understanding of all the things
that Python can do.  You'll still want to read more traditional
tutorials and thoery as well, but that can wait, just play around with
it for a while.