Python tutorial for total beginners?

Question

I've recently been given a group of five 16/17 year old students to mentor through a extra-curricular software project. The only trouble is, they have never done any form of coding / scripting. This in itself makes me feel nervous. After much agonising I settled on getting them to use Python as its free and there appears to be a lot of useful information online.

I myself have never used any python or even done any scripting, so I'll be learning it alongside the students. This fact doesn't really bother me so much as Im a professional and what kind of pro can't learn a new language ?! ... right! What does concern me is that the students have no rounding in software theory, techniques or practices so Ill have to point them in the direction of a good tutorial.

Does anyone know of a good python tutorial for (total) beginners that contains elements of theory and software techniques?

Answer 1

Learning to Program by Alan Gauld, covers the basics. It uses Python mostly, but references other languages.

Answer 2

The tutorial in the official python manual is excellent.

Answer 3

Have a look at the page Beginner's Guide to Python, on the official python web site. Here is also a list of suggested books.

My advice would be: take a recent book on the subject, because Python syntax changed with time to make programming with it much easier. For backward compatibility the "old" commands were kept, and so if you try these they will still work, but they are much more complex to use.

Answer 4

The "Think in Python" (Bruce Eckel) e-book is a good point to start learning Python and get good O.O. habits.

Answer 5

Python for Software Design which you can soon buy as a book, or download as a PDF file (which probably is not as nicely typeset or complete as the book).

Answer 6

How to think like a python programmer may fit your bill. The author wrote this book as a book for an introductionary programming course.

Answer 7

As always, I recommend at least dipping into the classics - try taking stuff from SICP for when you want to detour into a little bit of computer-science magic.

Answer 8

2 free books come to mind:

Dive Into Python: http://diveintopython.org/
A Byte of Python: http://www.swaroopch.com/notes/Python

Both are excellent beginners books and are available in print version or free online.

Here is a comprehensive list of free books online: http://linkmingle.com/list/List-of-Free-Online-Python-Books-freebooksandarticles

Answer 9

For a truly exhaustive list of Python tutorials indexed by subject and including a list of "beginner" tutorials, see http://www.awaretek.com/tutorials.html

Answer 10

For the true beginner, Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python is superb. Really simple (often brute force) code, reimplementing simple games (tic-tac-toe, etc.) at the command line, while building towards smarter coding.

Also, it's free!

Answer 11

I like A Byte of Python. The way it describes itself:

If all you know about computers is how to save text files, then this is the book for you.