Hey guys, I was just wondering if there's a good tutorial out there for creating a simple but not too beginner'ish program in python that explains what everything does in it, because I'm having trouble understanding what all the functions and keywords do in python. If its important, I'm using Python 3.1.1. Thx all http://www.amazon.com/Python-Dummies-Computer-Tech/dp/0471778648/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258861388&sr=8-1 is a great book on it if you have about $20 to spend. I have a used copy that I picked up for $7 off of ebay and it was good in the fact that it has lots of helpful tips and analogies to help understand stuff and of course some humor thrown in as the For Dummies series generally has mixed in as easter eggs.

* I'd go with simple ASCII for the Hangman Game to keep it simple at the command prompt. Later on you can tie in CGI with Python and either IIS or Apache server and make Web Based Games which can look far more professional.why spend your parent's (or your) hard earned moneyneedlessly when you can get for free?? Go to the official web site of Python to learn about Python. Why do people write books and read books about programming in anything? I MEAN, seriously, they can just read the dry and boring technical references.

Heck, why bother with computer books at all? just go with processor, memory, and device specifications, and people can extrapolate the rest for themselves. Or, maybe, these books provide an actual "human" voice to the dry function and statement references.

Back in the day when programs actually came with "hard copy" books, language environments almost non-exclusively came with at least two references- a language reference, and a programmers guide. By the logic provided here would the programmers guide not be extraneous? Why bother with such topics as "getting started" when such space could be used for yet another statement truth table?

Why? the very same reason we HAVE interpreted languages like Python. an analogous statement to "Why read books about it when you have the SDK" is PRETTY much "why use programming languages when we can use machine code?" It sounds silly phrased that way, but that's just what it is.


THAT being said, however; The documentation is vital, and should be a first step in any case. What I contest is the "documentation is always enough" concept; The documentation is written from one perspective, and extra documentation, books, and materials are invaluable as you reach into the upper echelons of a program's designed CAPABILITIES, as it can often help with what would otherwise be an insurmountable hurdle, documentation or no documentation. Oftentimes when confronted with a programming problem of some form, I will read my many programming oriented books; old and NEW. Even the oldest programming books can offer insight into modern programming; it really hasn't changed as much as many of us would like; it's still one of the youngest sciences and while we'd like to think that programming languages like python or .NET or perl are far more advanced then the languages we were using in the 70's they really are far too similar for comfort; we still "speak" to computers in a semi-english "dialect" the only thing that has changed is the grammars and the concepts involved with their arrangement. Saying they are "better" depends entirely on the definition of "better", which can range from the performance of the language to the size of the source code to such esoteric metrics as the average length of it's keywords; each of these particular traits has different values for nearly any programming language and to say one is better then any other is to shut out a world of languages just as the unilanguage english-speaking population would say English is the "best" language.

By shutting out what one believes to be inferior one can become so themselves.


Hmm, once again, a very odd rant-like POST. so after all that "rant", what is your stand?, books or no books? In this age of technology and the web, books are really of little use. True, it may or may not teach you all you need to know about a language, however, the wealth of information about the language is only limited to the author and a few select individuals. look at the PHP doc site for example. I think its good, because people all over the world comes and contribute their code and stuff. Books? what for. there are many stuffs the author may not know and the community has already made aware ofQuote from: gh0std0g74 on November 22, 2009, 01:02:34 AM

books are really of little use.

I hope you only mean that in the present context,

thanks Dave, ill probably consider that when i get the money. my only problem was getting the game to generate random words. thx