

Ask HN: How did you become an fluent(expert) in Python? - rsa

Please suggest any advanced tutorials/videos/books or code you studied to learn everything about python.
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doug1001
I doubt i can suggest a single resource not already mentioned in that SO Post.
So i'll give a domain-specific one in the event that you or other HN readers
are interested in using python for matrix computation. Of course, the core
libraries are NumPy, SciPy, and Matplotlib. On the main SciPy Site, all of the
docstrings for a large portion of the methods in NumPy core are collected on a
single HTML Page (<http://www.scipy.org/Numpy_Example_List_With_Doc>). This is
an awesome way to learn NumPy--by working the small examples at at the command
line. After you do them once, come back to them again, in a few
months--"repetition is the mother of skill" as we used to say in the Marines.
Two more: there are two excellent tutorials tucked away on the SciPy Site, one
called "indexing" and one called "building arrays" which are also comprised of
small interactive snippets <http://www.scipy.org/Cookbook/Indexing>;
<http://www.scipy.org/Cookbook/BuildingArrays>.

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rsa
Thanks for the links.

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macarthy12
Learn Python the hard way, <http://learnpythonthehardway.org/>

Free

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hef19898
I actually hear about quite often. Being determined to learn python (once time
allows), I'm wondering if "learn python the hard way" is good. Does anyone on
HN have any experience on it? I'll give it a try anyway, but any feedback
regarding this particular way or any other way to learn python is welcome! :-)

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swordswinger12
It's a great _beginning_ tutorial in python. I've been coding C/C++ for ~4
years, and when I went through LPTHW, I found it frustratingly oversimplified.

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S4M
Yeah, "learn python the hard way" is the book I wished I read before I knew
anything about programming. it's really a great book, but it targets people
who have very little experience in programming.

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hef19898
Thanks! Sounds exactly like what I need. The last time I even SAW any code
were some DOS command lines during my studies.

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smeg
I found this post on SO quite enlightening:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/101268/hidden-features-
of...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/101268/hidden-features-of-python)

It now also has many links at the top to other SO answers on various topics -
this is amazing.

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rsa
Thanks for the link. I have mastered all the hidden features. :)

