Programming/Scripting Resource

[CLIFFORD ILKAY]

On Thursday 11 January 2007 16:11, Matt wrote:
> Wow, thank you everyone for all this great info!  I'm going to have
> to give this some more thought before I choose which language to
> start on.

Hi Matt,

Since you are new to programming, and even if you were not, I would 
highly recommend the book "Learn to Program Using Python" by Alan 
Gauld. Gauld explains that his objective is not necessarily to make 
you an expert in Python but to teach you about programming constructs 
that are common to most languages and I think he succeeds. Another 
book I've read that was like that was Dave Mark's excellent book of 
the early '90s "Learn C on the Macintosh". I wanted to learn C on the 
Macintosh and noticed that he did not assume any prior programming 
experience. I eventually gave the book to a friend who wanted to 
learn how to program but had no idea of what programming was and he 
found it quite useful.

Many of the books or tutorials on the web assume you have some prior 
programming experience and jump right into the language. A couple of 
good resources on the web that come to mind are: "How to Think Like a 
Computer Scientist - Learning With Python" 
<http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy/> and "Instant Hacking" 
<http://hetland.org/python/instant-hacking.php>. The beauty of Python 
is that the barriers to entry to start using it are very low. If 
you're running Linux or OS X, you don't have to fuss with setting up 
a Python environment. On Windows, download and install from here: 
<http://www.python.org/download/>. Typing "python" in a shell will 
get you into a Python shell at which point, you'll immediately be 
able to start writing Python code. You can improve your Python 
experience considerably by installing iPython 
<http://ipython.scipy.org/>, which is an alternative Python shell but 
that's an optional step.
-- 
Regards,

Clifford Ilkay
Dinamis Corporation
3266 Yonge Street, Suite 1419
Toronto, ON
Canada  M4N 3P6

+1 416-410-3326
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