I'll add http://www.diveintopython.net/toc/index.html to the suggestions - great resource for programmers who may know other languages.
cheers, - Nimret Sandhu http://www.nimret.org On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 6:52 PM, Luke Cypret <[email protected]> wrote: > Coursera has a free course available. Virtual classroom with homework on a > schedule as well. Starts October 7th and is 9 weeks long. It's put on by > professors at Rice University. > > Personally I'm a beginner here and I have the official docs, > reddit.com/r/learnpython, python programming for the absolute beginner > and head first books as my go-tos. I find I get bored with certain content > and the selection I mentioned really mixes it up. > > The above route may be what you want for your size. On another note I just > recently applied for the UW Continuing Education Python Certificate > program. Crossing my fingers there. > > -Luke > > On Jul 16, 2013, at 3:35 AM, Pat Tressel <[email protected]> wrote: > > Chad -- > > I've been looking for Python training materials online for some time, and > have not found anything very good. The (very large) LinkedIn Python group > has repeatedly discussed online resources, and also come away unsatisfied, > to the point where a whole bunch of folks offered to help write a good > tutorial and reference. Unfortunately, that died out when the person who > initiated the project went silent... The verdict of the LinkedIn Python > folks was that the various online books each have some quirk that renders > them not truly Pythonic, or include ways of doing things that folks > considered incorrect. I or my students have sampled the online Python > courses, and found them boring or buggy or incomplete or intended to teach > generic programming, not Python. For instance, normally, I like Udacity a > lot, but the Udacity cs100 course spends *five segments* on string quoting > and syntax. IMO that should take five *seconds* -- one sentence, and > done. One of my young students tried out the CodeAcademy Python course, > and said the interactive tutorial UI didn't work correctly. He showed me > what they were having him do, and it too looked boring. So we dropped that > and instead I had him write a "guess the randomly-selected number within a > range" game -- let him pick the features and how it should interact with > the player. With no CS training (other than 8 weeks of Scratch programming > we'd just finished), when I asked, how should the player choose their > guesses to get to the right number in the fewest guesses, he spontaneously > came up with binary search! > > I would like to recommend Nick Parlante's video tutorials, but it looks > like the version that's been released publicly is the one for relatively > inexperienced programmers, so it might be too elementary: > > https://developers.google.com/edu/python/ > > There was a shorter version aimed at C++/Java devs that was trialed inside > Google, but one could just go through the above material more quickly. It > doesn't intend to teach more than the basics though -- people were expected > to pick up whatever else they needed on their own. > > * Introduction to Python (for experienced developers) >> * Reading and writing technical data (HDF, NetCDF, MATLAB) >> * NumPy >> * SciPy with focus on signal processing >> > > You may also want Pandas: > > http://pandas.pydata.org/ > > The author of Pandas has a well-regarded book: > > http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023784.do > > which is available online via Seattle Public Library, IIRC. > > Since I'm only just starting to do data analysis with Python, I'm not an > appropriate instructor candidate -- I'd only be learning just ahead of the > students... > > * Interfacing with C and Fortran >> * Data visualizations (matplotlib and beyond) >> > > -- Pat > >
