notbob wrote:

> On 2004-08-07, Jeffrey Froman <jeffrey@I.slack> wrote:
>
>> Python certainly is! And pertinent to the larger topic at hand, python
>> works beautifully as an object oriented language and saves gazillions of
>> development and maintenance hours over something like C++.
>
> Glad you brought it up. I'm trying to learn python. Can you recommend a
> good book? I'm not great at coding, even though I've some experience with
> basic and C. I picked python because, near as I can tell, it's the least
> frustrating. Right now I'm flogging Alan Gauld's Learning to Program
> tutorial (online) which is pretty good for a hard case like myself, but I'd
> like a good treeware reference with all the basics and syntax minutiae I'm
> going to need. Any advice? Thnx.
>
> nb

There are a lot of really good Python books.... mainly because Python is
fairly easy to learn because it is so well-thought-out. And because the
language is so elegant and so object oriented, it's kind of hard to write a
'bad book' on it. It's hard to go wrong with most of the books out there. I
like the Learning Python, Second Edition by Mark Lutz, David Ascher tome.

I'm not sure about the future of Python. You are 'stuck' with Tcl as a GUI,
and that's somewhat limiting.... unless things have changed.... it's been a
while since I've toyed with it.

Nice thing about Python, if you learn it, you almost know Java... indeed,
Python is what Java should have been... and might have been if it were not
'owned' by Sun.

You might also take a look at Jython or Ruby. I think the future is with
these. Or maybe get a grasp on C# with the Mono project. If you are a
consultant, there will be work on this platform sooner or later (probably
sooner.... or when they come up with some kind of screen painter a la Visual
Studio w/ ASP.)

When I was at LinuxWorld this week, I had a long talk with the Trolltech (QT)
folks. They have some stuff coming out for web development that will blow you
away.... but I can't speak about it. Very cool, for sure.


ANC