[Tutor] best book?

[Alan Gauld]

"Andrew Purdea" <purdeaandrew at gmail.com> wrote

> Hi! what do you guys think that would be the best free book, or 
> tutorial or
> something to start learning python?

The best free book for an experienced programmer is the
standard tutorial that comes with Python.

> Something that can also focus on important differences from
> other languages,

It doesn't do this but other papers on the web site do.

> present why some choices made in the design are better then others.

That's very hard to be objective about. Thee is no right decision
in language design. Python has its own strengths and philosophy
but they are very different to the goals that guided C++ development,
which in turn were different to those guiding Java..

> just present the information, but also make it easyer to understand 
> it ;-)

The best place for that is probably the PEP archive. The rationale
behind new features is explained well in mosty cases.

If you don't mind paying for it, Wesley's 'Core Python' paper
book does a very good job of explaining the core language.

HTH,

-- 
Alan Gauld
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld