[Tutor] Greetings Pythonistas

galaxywatcher at gmail.com galaxywatcher at gmail.com
Thu Jan 7 14:15:46 CET 2010


This is my first post to the Python tutor list and I just wanted to  
introduce myself and give a little background on my skill level prior  
to asking for Python advice and programming tips. I am relatively new  
to Python, but I have been dabbling with unix shell scripting for at  
least 10 years. I can construct powerful one liners using awk, sed,  
cut, uniq, sort, grep, etc. I definitely know my way around the unix  
file system. I use vim with various plugins, and I feel like I am the  
eternal unix student, constantly evolving my skills, but never  
reaching mastery. I have worked my way slightly past the novice level  
with Perl, but I never felt that I made the breakthrough that I needed  
to feel proficient enough to do anything serious with it.

Python feels different. I have the gut instinct that I can really  
develop my skill set to do great things with the language. By great, I  
mean, that I can take an idea, a big idea even, and efficiently  
transform that idea into a software reality. I really want to master  
this language. I am reading two books at the moment and working  
through the exercises: Dive into Python by Mark Pilgrim, and Python  
Programming - An Introduction to Computer Science by Zelle. I have  
ideas that I want to develop, I put the books down and start  
scripting, but I always seem to hit a wall based on my lack of  
knowledge, so I pick up the books again and continue reading. I often  
wish that I had a private tutor or a Python guru that I could just ask  
how to get past a certain wall. Perhaps this list has that person or  
people on it. With that said, I look forward to participating with the  
Python tutors here.

Thanks
Blake


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