Re: [Hampshire] Where to start with Python?

On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 09:36:10AM -0400, Andy Random wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> No before you ask I haven't turned to the darkside and decided to learn
> Python :)
>
> However a friend of mines son is at uni and is struggling with Python.
>
> He has almost no programming experience to draw on and it's not a CompSci
> course, but there is one unit which requires some Python scripting. He's
> asked for help but apparently his tutor isn't being very helpful and just
> says go read a tutorial online :(
>
> He is a bright kid but doesn't have a computer/coding background so is
> struggling to get started and I can't advise him on Python since I've
> never used it.
>
> So any recommendations for easy intros to Python which assume minimal
> prior knowledge of coding?

The python tutorials[1] themselves aren't too bad -- effectively
teaching by example. However, they do have lots of references to other
languages (in the vein of "Unlike C, python does <this>"), which may
be confusing to a complete beginner. I would suggest sucking it and
seeing...

I suspect that the main problem may not be with python as such, but
with how to program. I don't know to help with that, I'm afraid.

The other thing that is massively useful is the python library
reference[2], in particular the pages on built-in functions (section
2) and built-in types (section 4), which may take a while to find the
thing you want, but between them document pretty much all of the basic
functions of Python.

Hugo.

[1] http://docs.python.org/tutorial/introduction.html
[2] http://docs.python.org/library/index.html

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