As a raw beginner that tried this book as the first I'll say that it's frustrating to try to learn with it. It explains something pretty well and then suddenly

As a raw beginner that tried this book as the first I'll say that it's frustrating to try to learn with it. It explains something pretty well and then suddenly there is a big knowledge jump that you must fill looking at internet (I had to check the python documentation several times to understand what was happening at some examples). I started looking at other books and found "Learn python programming arcade games with pygame"by Paul Cramel, who is teaching his own book at an university course. For me it's sooo much clear, taking you step by step through the difficult concepts (hand holding if you wish), that suddenly are not that difficult. It contains lots of simple exercises and questionnaires that make sure that you understand the concepts in the lesson. Each lesson has also it's own Lab, that gives you the specs and making you use the lesson material to code on your own. I find this to be the perfect way to fix the ideas in a practical way. I don´t know enough to create my own exercises' specs being a complete newbie. Of course making games and moving drawings is hands down much fun than writing command line scripts. It only has a small problem, you need to install pygame's libraries, which can be a bit difficult in mac. I had to do several tries with snow leopard, Finally I installed the latest Mac OS and it installed without problems. I'm recommending it to every body who asks me. It's free in his site and the e-book(that I bought) it's inexpensive. I´m sure LEARN PYTHON THE HARD WAY is and will be useful to a lot of people, and don´t mean to disrespect the author effort in helping people learn programming, but I thought worth giving an alternative in case you are looking for one. I´m not related in any way to Mr. Cramel, I just happen to find his book very useful.