[Tutor] Book recommendations

[Brian van den Broek]

scarab at transwitch.co.za said unto the world upon 29/04/2004 06:01:
> can anyone suggest good/great python newbie books? i use to own Alan 
> Gauld's excellent book, but i'm also looking for others.
> 
> many thanks!
> 
> 
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Hi,

For the true newbie, I thought Think Like a Computer Scientist was very 
good. It's written for high school students and thus starts slow. Full 
text is free at http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy/

For more detail, the almost-canonical source seems to be Lutz and Ascher's 
Learning Python. http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lpython2/.

One that I've looked at some is Magnus Lie Hetland's Practical Python. It 
seems to use substantial example programs more than most books I found. It 
thus seems very useful for the "OK, but how do I glue this all together to 
do something non-trivial? sort of question. Hetland's page for his book is 
http://hetland.org/writing/practical-python/.

I found both Hetland's book and Learning Python available on-line, but 
this was through services that my uni library subscribes to.

None of these 3 books are very well suited to looking things up in a 
hurry. For that, Python in a Nutshell -- 
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pythonian/.

Last, for the "batteries", Fredrik Lundh's Python Standard Library is 
available in print http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pythonsl/ or in a 
different (and downloadable) edition from Lundh himself at 
http://effbot.org/zone/librarybook-index.htm.

Whichever way you go, Magnus Lycka's advice to use the interactive 
interpreter as you read is spot on. (The archives of tutor have more than 
one example-post from me demonstrating the shortfalls of trying to learn 
by book alone.)

Hope these are of use.

Best,

Brian vdB