[Zope] Python books (was RE: Greetings)

[Luciano Ramalho]

At 16:39 17/08/99 +0100, you wrote:
>I am trying to learn Python and would like any input on books and 
>tutorials to aid in learning.

The best Python book today is "Internet Programming With Python", both for
beginners and advanced users. It starts with an excellent overview and
proceeds to cover the hows and whys of the language very authoritatively.
The authors are some of the foremost Python gurus, including Aaron Watters
and Guido van Rossum, creator of Python.

IMHO, "Programming Python" is too verbose and has too many bad jokes (bad
jokes tend to be more distracting than good ones, for some reason). Because
of its sheer volume, it must make a lot of people think that Python is much
more complicated than Perl, since "Programming Perl" is about half its size. 

"Programming Python" beats IPWP in one area: Tkinter programming (a topic
that is not relevant to Zopistas in general).

"Learning Python" is short, but also tends to get lost in distracting details.
It has one chapter that is very helpful for beginners: "Common Tasks is
Python". That is one of the two sample chapters O'Reilly has in their
web-site. Check it out at:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lpython/chapter/ch09.html

The "Python Pocket Reference" is useful, although it lacks an index.

The tutorial by Guido van Rossum available at http://www.python.org is also
a good starting point.

Python is easy to learn, consistent and readable, so one book should
suffice, and reading lots of source code is the way to mastery.

Best regards,

Luciano Ramalho