[Tutor] Books for Learning Python

[Gary L. Gray]

On Jan 11, 2013, at 1:39 PM, Alan Gauld <alan.gauld at btinternet.com> wrote:

> On 11/01/13 14:10, Chris Rogers wrote:
>> Hello all, I've began my journey into Python (2.7 currently) and I'm
>> finding it a bit rough using the python.org <http://python.org>
>> tutorials.
> 
> You don't tell us your starting point.
> 
> Are you experienced in programming in other languages or is python your first foray into Programming? Are you a professional or hobbyist?
> 
> Do you have a scientific or math background?
> 
> All of these influence what makes a book suitable.
> Some of the tutorials listed on Python.org are also paper books (including mine).
> 
> Which tutorials have you looked at? The official tutor is good for people who can already program. The non-programmes ones are better if you can't already program (as you'd expect!). There are also several python videos available on sites likeshowmedo.com
> 
> If you can answer the above questions we might be able to recommend some books.

I am also looking for some good resources for learning Python. Here is my background.

I did a lot of programming in Fortran 77 while working on my Ph.D. in engineering mechanics (graduated in 1993). I did some simple programming in Matlab and Mathematica in the 90s, but all the coding for my research since then has been done by my graduate students. I want to get back into programming so that I can create applications and animate the motion of objects for undergraduate and graduate dynamics courses I teach. Friends tell me Python is a good choice for an object oriented language (about which I know almost nothing) that has a readable syntax.

With this in mind, I have two questions:

(1) Will Python allow me to create applications that provide a simple GUI interface to something like an integrator for ODEs? Does it have graphics libraries that allow one to animate the motion of simple objects (e.g., spheres, ellipsoids, parallelepipeds, etc.) based on the results of numerical simulations?

(2) If the answers to the above questions are generally "yes," where are some good places to get started learning Python to achieve my goals?

Thank you.

Gary L. Gray