User:Konrad U Foerstner/Introduction to Python

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

Links for beginners

• Python for Non-Programmers lists some useful resources and (even interactive) courses

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
• Code Academy's Python class

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