User:Konrad U Foerstner/Introduction to Python

A quite opinionated introduction to Python as first programming language to learn.

Python's Philosophies

 * PEP 20 - The Zen of Python

Python Style

 * PEP 8 - Style Guide for Python Code
 * PEP 257 - Docstring Conventions

Batteries included

 * The Python Standard Library

Further Reading / useful introductions

 * Learn Python The Hard Way
 * Dive into Python 3

Stuff beginners often skip ... and then never learn later

 * Testing!
 * unittest
 * The Python Testing Tools Taxonomy
 * Continuous integration
 * tdeamon
 * Code quality checker
 * pylint
 * Python Project howto
 * Open-Source licenses

Choose your tools wisely
Code is not generated out of thin air. A good powerful editor / IDE can assist you a lot. On the other hand this tool should not stand in your way and should be light-weighted.


 * Editor/IDE
 * GNU/Emacs
 * Emacs Python mode
 * YASnippet
 * Distributed revision control systems
 * git
 * mercurial