Learning Python

Books

“Learn Python the Hard Way, 3rd Edition” is available online for free or you can buy the eBook.

Several Packt Publishing titles also come to mind:
• Learning Python Design Patterns
• Expert Python Programming
• Python Tools for Visual Studio
• Raspberry Pi Cookbook for Python Programmers
• BeagleBone for Secret Agents
• Python for Secret Agents
• Python Programming for Arduino

I would suggest creating an account with them and signing up for their daily special.

Some people don’t like O’Reilly but I find their books are pretty good as well:
• Head First Python

IDE

One thing Python lacks is a solid IDE but that’s changed now that Microsoft has made Visual Studio Community 2013 available for free. Couple this with the Packt title, “Python Tools for Visual Studio“, listed earlier and you have a viable platform.

Some people swear by IDLE; I like Google’s PyScripter myself.

There’s also a great stackoverflow article listing many of the IDEs available and their feature set.

Python 2.x vs 3.x

There’s a war of sorts going on in the Python community since the release of version 3.x which breaks some existing 2.x code. The general consensus is to steer people towards 3.x unless they have to support 2.x legacy code or require a plug-in that’s not supported in 3.x.

~ by bwsd on February 12, 2015.