notbob wrote:

> Glad you brought it up.**I'm*trying*to*learn*python.**Can*you*recommen d*a
> good book?**I'm*not*great*at*coding,*even*though*I've*s ome*experience*with
> basic and C.**I*picked*python*because,*near*as*I*can*tell,*i t'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.

For the basics, the Python Tutorial (http://docs.python.org/tut/tut.html) is
good. If you want something more basic and overviewish, then the book
Learning Python from O'reilly (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lpython2/) is
a comfortable read.

I had never seen Alan Gauld's book until you mentioned it, but for something
else in that vein, and with perhaps more python gristle, the online book
"How to Think Like a Computer Scientist" is great
(http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy/).

For the detailed specifics, there's nothing better than the Python Library
Reference itself (http://www.python.org/doc/lib/). Once you get used to the
ideas of importing modules and calling methods from them, this reference
will become the most heavily used bookmark in your repertoire. Sort of the
man pages for python.

Another book from Oreilly that I really like is the Python Cookbook
(http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pythoncook/) which is sort of a Best Of,
Plus Useful Commentary from
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python.

Hope you have fun with python. I sure do.

Jeffrey