which book on python for a complete beginner

Disco Boy · 21 Nov 2012 at 11:30

Hi all,

A friend of mine is looking to start learning python, and I was thinking of buying him a book on it for Christmas. He hasn't done any programming before.

Rather than just picking one of the result off Amazon, I thought I'd ask for recommendations from people here. Ideally I'd like to spend less than £20, but that isn't set in stone.

AHarvey · 21 Nov 2012 at 13:41

http://www.headfirstlabs.com/books/hfpython/

covers mainly python 3 but lots of 2 in there as well

uniQ · 21 Nov 2012 at 14:32

The python docs is probably the best place to learn.
http://docs.python.org/2/tutorial/

As for books:
http://learnpythonthehardway.org/
& or
http://greenteapress.com/thinkpython/thinkpython.html

However both are free to read online.

Disco Boy · 21 Nov 2012 at 20:53

Thank you both. I think I'll shelve the idea as a gift and recommend those online sources instead.

AHarvey · 21 Nov 2012 at 21:50

send him over to codeacademy, they've an interactive python tutorial. It's ok, 8/10 and gives a good understanding of the language but somethings are old methods, but they still work.