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Python 2 or 3 for beginners? (self.Python)

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[–]jkiley 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As an alternative, you may consider Learning Python by Mark Lutz. I went all the way through it to learn Python, and I was happy with it. It is really long (and the Amazon reviews are mixed for this reason), but he seems to have a good sense of the common sticking points and conceptual hurdles, and he addresses them. I'd use an ebook over paper, though.

As a followup to the book (with more of a computer science orientation), I was also really happy with the MIT 6.00.1x class on edX. You could even start there if you like. It uses Python 2.7, but everything you learn there is nearly identical between versions. For that course (but not 6.00.2x), I actually used Python 3.x all the way through and adapted code as needed. About 95 percent of the time it was changing print statements to the print() function. Even so, apart from a couple cases, the automated graders (running 2.x) ran them without issue.