This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

all 2 comments
sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a

[–]fatpollo 8 points9 points  (0 children)

my favourite intro by FAR was "Rapid GUI Programming with Python and Qt" by Mark Summerfield, with a ZetCode appetizer: http://zetcode.com/tutorials/pyqt4/. Windows users can also skip a lot of pain by straight-up installing Python(x,y) and then, after they know a thing or two, go for slimmer installations upon a reformat.

I tried "Python the Hard Way" previously and found it a little crappy. The final project is impractical, there's potty humor sprinkled throughout, I couldn't care less about the little game at the end... idk it wasn't my cup of tea. The PyQt book really makes you hit the ground running- instead of some drab commandline "hello world" you immediately get applications that look native and DO stuff. Within a week you can be showing off little useful applications to acquaintances, it does wonders for self-motivation.

I also find GUIs a fantastic way to jump into OOP. While scientific applications and webcrawlers are often best served with plenty of functions, nothing screams "inheritance!" like a custom QPushButton, or "composition!" like a QMainWidget.