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To add to the free Python book fest, Learn Python the Hard Way http://learnpythonthehardway.com http://learnpythonthehardway.com is excellent for beginners. If

by jbail 16y ago

To add to the free Python book fest, Learn Python the Hard Way http://learnpythonthehardway.com http://learnpythonthehardway.com is excellent for beginners. If you do know how to program, Dive Into Python http://diveintopython.org http://diveintopython.org is also excellent. They're both free. I've been programming for awhile, but I read both books and took useful things away from both of them.

icey 16y ago
Just keep in mind that Dive Into Python hasn't been significantly updated since 2004.
- jbail 16y ago
  I've been trying nearly all the code samples and haven't run into any issues yet. I'm using version 2.7 of Python though. Haven't upgraded to 3.1 yet.
- sigzero 16y ago
  There is a "v3" version and the "v2" version is sufficient to learn from despite not having been updated for a while.
RyanMcGreal 16y ago
DIP has a few pitfalls, mostly related to old technologies, but it holds up surprisingly well. For HTML processing, you're much better off using the BeautifulSoup module than the process outlined in DIP. The web services chapter is still solid on generalities, but these days a growing number of RESTful (or REST-ish) services deliver content in JSON. As of Python 2.6, the standard library includes the json module, which converts a JSON object into a native Python list/dictionary. (For earlier versions, the same library is available in the third-party simplejson module.) If you're targeting 2.x, you can always import json this way: try: import json except ImportError: import simplejson as json For RESTful web service interaction, Dive Into Python 3 includes a useful chapter on using the excellent third-party httplib2 module, which is definitely worth reviewing as httplib2 is available for 2.x. The SOAP web services chapter is well past its best-by date (as is the SOAP protocol itself). If you need to access a SOAP web service, the third party suds module is pretty good. (As far as I can tell, the SOAPpy module is no longer actively maintained.)

by jbail 16y ago

icey 16y ago

Just keep in mind that Dive Into Python hasn't been significantly updated since 2004.

jbail 16y ago
I've been trying nearly all the code samples and haven't run into any issues yet. I'm using version 2.7 of Python though. Haven't upgraded to 3.1 yet.
sigzero 16y ago
There is a "v3" version and the "v2" version is sufficient to learn from despite not having been updated for a while.

RyanMcGreal 16y ago

DIP has a few pitfalls, mostly related to old technologies, but it holds up surprisingly well. For HTML processing, you're much better off using the BeautifulSoup module than the process outlined in DIP. The web services chapter is still solid on generalities, but these days a growing number of RESTful (or REST-ish) services deliver content in JSON. As of Python 2.6, the standard library includes the json module, which converts a JSON object into a native Python list/dictionary. (For earlier versions, the same library is available in the third-party simplejson module.) If you're targeting 2.x, you can always import json this way: try: import json except ImportError: import simplejson as json For RESTful web service interaction, Dive Into Python 3 includes a useful chapter on using the excellent third-party httplib2 module, which is definitely worth reviewing as httplib2 is available for 2.x. The SOAP web services chapter is well past its best-by date (as is the SOAP protocol itself). If you need to access a SOAP web service, the third party suds module is pretty good. (As far as I can tell, the SOAPpy module is no longer actively maintained.)