[Tutor] basic Qs [tutorial / text editors / performance characteristics]

[Danny Yoo]

On Thu, 13 Feb 2003, Erik Price wrote:

> On Thursday, February 13, 2003, at 07:20  AM, siddharth karandikar
> wrote:
>
> > i am new to the world of Python, so i would like to ask some basic
> > questions ??
> >
> > which books OR docs to refere ??
> > ( i am not new to programming but new to Python )
>
> If you already know how to program, perhaps you just need a quick
> tutorial and a language reference?


Hi Siddharth,


You may want to try the official Python tutorial at:

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

Since you already have programming experience, I don't have so many qualms
recommending it for you.  If you have questions, please feel free to bring
them up on the Tutor list; we're here to help each other learn Python.

By the way, what kind of programming background do you have already?  We
may be able to point you toward more appropriate material that takes
better advantage of your experience.




> I think "Python Essential Reference" by David Beazley (sp?) is a decent
> book, but I don't have my copy on me (it's at work).
>
> > which editor / IDE is best for Python ??
>
> I use BBEdit on MacOS X at home and jEdit on Windows at work.

There's a list of text editors that integrate themselves well with Python
on the PythonWiki:

    http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/moinmoin/PythonEditors

I personally use Emacs with the 'python-mode' extensions, and it fits
comfortably for me.  I've also heard very good things about Vim's
integration with Python.

Let's defuse the holy war fast: A good bet is to use the text editor that
you're most comfortable with already.  (Unless that's Microsoft Notepad;
if so, switch to something else, for your own sake.  *grin*).




> > i would also like to know the performance comparison between following
> > - shell scripts
> > - perl
> > - PYTHON
>
> "It all depends."

Siddharth, there's a page that's been partitioned off the Documentation
page on Python.org that provides some comparisons between Python and other
languages:

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

But take these with a grain of salt: there's a good reason why they're
linked up from Python.org.  *grin* There's another site that might
interest you: Doug Bagley has taken an empirical appraoch, and written a
pretty comprehensive test suite of programs for many languages:

    http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/



Please feel free to ask more questions about Python.  Good luck!