[Tutor] help

[Danny Yoo]

On Tue, 20 Aug 2002, HM Teo wrote:

> I am a beginner in Python. I just installed Python in my computer few
> days ago. I had read through the Python manual

Yikes!  If, by the "Python manual" you mean:

    http://python.org/doc/tut/

then do not read it.  I'm serious!  *grin*

The official Python Tutorial is meant for people who've had prior
programming experience in another language --- it is not meant for
newcomers to programming.  If you feel uncomfortable reading through it,
that's a good sign.  *grin*

Try:

    http://python.org/doc/Newbies.html

which is a much gentler guide to programming.  There are several tutorials
there that should start from the very beginning; some good ones include
Josh Cogliati's tutorial, as well as Alan Gauld's.  All of the tutorials
there should be pretty good, so feel free to pick and see which one you
like best.


> It is also different to C programming, where every starting line in C
> must have include<stdio.h> and main...(for my opinion) but i dont either
> python is same or not??

It's actually a similar situation in Python.  Python doesn't literally
have a 'stdio', but it does have "modules".  What this means is that, if
someone else has written Python programs, we can use bits and pieces of
those programs and reuse them.


There's a whole collection of these 'modules' that are packaged under the
umbrella term "standard library"  --- almost every language has a
"standard library" to make common things easier to do.  You can take a
quick glance at:

    http://www.python.org/doc/lib/

Don't study it, but just page down quite a bit.  All those modules that
you see can be used by saying things like "import urllib", after which we
can start fiddling around with web pages and URLs.



> Besides that, is it Python can run on Windows 2000 Professional? Since
> Dos cannot (This is my opinion, dont know correct or not, please feel
> free to correct me if it is wrong.)

Python will run in Win2k pretty well; many of us here do run Python on
Windows, so if you have questions, please feel free to bring them to the
Tutor list.

To download Python for Win2k, I think you'll just need to get and run
"Python-2.2.1.exe", which should be here:

    http://python.org/2.2.1/


Anyway, hope this answers some of your questions.  When you have more
questions, or if you just want to talk about Python with others, please
feel free to chat on Tutor.  Good luck to you!