[Tutor] (no subject)

[Warren 'The Howdy Man' Ockrassa]

DanRey23@aol.com wrote:

> I am eager to learn how to program......I heard Python was the best
> beginner's language.

You heard correctly.

I am new to Python myself, but I know what you mean. To grasp and hold
the power of programming can be a wonderful, but frustrating, dream.

I'm pretty much a guru with Director, a commercial and for-profit
product made by Macromedia, and most of my domain is involved in working
with it. If you surfed there you would find a 20-odd step tutorial in
Director, which would at least get you started with it.

I mention this specifically because Director's script, Lingo, is very
similar to Python in many ways. And you can get a save-disabled version
of it from Macromedia, which could at least let you practice.

However for saved projects I would recommend you look into MetaCard,
http://www.metacard.com/ , which gives you a *fully functional* version
of their high-level language for *free* -- you pay only if you
distribute your files.

I mention Director and MetaCard specifically because I suspect you want
to be able to make graphical programs fairly easily, as well as learn
how to write programs in general, and either one of these tools does
this for you very well, whereas attaching a GUI to Python takes a bit
more work than perhaps you want to undertake at this point. (FWIW, I'm
in the beginning stages of putting together a py/tcl/tk based IDE like
Director, something similar to impress, but with more lowlevel coding,
animation control and such -- in fact I moved to py and its ancillary
modules partly out of frustration with Director, which is arguably a
wonderful tool but still limited since it is not opensource.)

Beside that, though, I can possibly help you with general concepts and
so on. Not really all Python, but the idea of how to actually *do* a
program as a meta-concept. (Before I started working for a commercial
company, I wrote educational software for about 5 years.)

Feel free to write me personally on this, and of course to surf my
pages.

Welcome, fellow traveller, to the world of programming. Once you are in,
you'll *never* want to go back. :)

Oh. A good start is the O'Reilly publication _Programming Python_. Hit
amazon to get a copy. I very strongly recommend it. It gets thick in
some places but it is a hell of an introduction to programming in
general, not just with Python. And it comes with a CD full of files.
Very nicely done overall.

--
    warren ockrassa | nightwares | mailto:warren@nightwares.com
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