I’d like to/need to get my head round Python, can anyone recommend a good book/website from personal experience? I’m not a programmer, well not since school (COMAL!) but use simple VBscript and can follow/edit VBA that others have written, but will essentially be starting from scratch.

I’m using this: http://www.sthurlow.com/python/

It doesn’t seem that bad, but the only way to learn it is to get the basics down and then use it pretty much constantly.

I’ve been told that the tutorial in the Python docs isn’t too bad either

<pulls up chair>

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlK62rjQWLk[/video]

I used the python docs one to learn last year. It was enough for me to work as well as everyone else I was working with at the time, but I’ve got lots of experience in lots of languages.

What are yuo intending to do with it? your own stuff? what? fix something else? work in a team?

Watch Harry Potter…

it is named after Monty Python apparently, the tuturial has ‘python inspired’ examples in it. I worked with a Japanese team – I had to explain the significance of the examples to them.

I’ve been told that the tutorial in the Python docs isn’t too bad either

Especially if you get the Monty Python jokes.

Have a play with the Tkinter package thats quite good. http://www.pythonware.com/library/tkinter/introduction/

Is this the right subroutine for an argument? 😉

Dive Into Python is really good and beginner oriented.

I really rate “Core Python” by Wesley J Chun

Its a good if you are already understand software and just want to learn Python rather than how to write your first program.

I still refer to it.

I really rate “Core Python” by Wesley J Chun

I agree, this is excellent book. But as you said, you need to know the basics.

Another great book for referring to is Python Cookbook. It contains many recipes for all sorts of stuff. Really handy if you know your way around but are not familiar with python libraries themselves.

Cheers, will take a look.

What are yuo intending to do with it? your own stuff? what? fix something else? work in a team?

Two things, scripting macros in ArcGIS, to recreate some VBA macro functions I’ve inherited (VBA is no longer supported by default in ArcGIS), and create others, and down the line do some fancier stuff hopefully. http://www.esri.com/library/fliers/pdfs/python-in-arcgis10.pdf

Secondly, and this is a longer term and totally different aim, to create a program with a GUI that allows me to create additive synthesis data, controlling various parameters of the data, for a software synth (Alchemy) in the synth’s native file format. I am sad.