6 Free E-Books on Learning to Program with Python
Python is an increasingly popular language, and it's also a favorite language teaching first time programmers. We've compiled a list of beginner's books to choose from. Just because they're free doesn't mean they aren't good. Some of the books listed here have been used in courses such as MIT's Introduction to Computer Science and Programming course and University of California, Davis' Basic Concepts of Programming course.
Bruce Eckel's MindView, Inc: Thinking in Python
You can download the current version of Thinking in Python here. This includes the BackTalk comment collection system that I built in Zope. The page describing this project is here. The current version of the book is 0.1. This is a preliminary release; please note that not all the chapters in the book have been translated.
(the eff-bot guide to) The Standard Python Library
[home] [track changes (rss)] Based in part on over 3,000 newsgroup articles written by Python veteran Fredrik Lundh since 1995, this book provides brief descriptions and sample scripts for all standard modules in the Python 2.0 library. For more information on the book and the print editions, see (the eff-bot guide to) The Standard Python Library. Note that the book was written for Python 2.0, but most of the code still works in current versions. You can get the chapters in PDF form here. Table of contents
Book
Natural Language Processing with Python – Analyzing Text with the Natural Language Toolkit Steven Bird, Ewan Klein, and Edward Loper This version of the NLTK book is updated for Python 3 and NLTK 3.
How to make beautiful data visualizations in Python with matplotlib
It’s been well over a year since I wrote my last tutorial, so I figure I’m overdue. This time, I’m going to focus on how you can make beautiful data visualizations in Python with matplotlib. There are already tons of tutorials on how to make basic plots in matplotlib. There’s even a huge example plot gallery right on the matplotlib web site, so I’m not going to bother covering the basics here. However, one aspect that’s missing in all of these tutorials and examples is how to make a nice-looking plot. Below, I’m going to outline the basics of effective graphic design and show you how it’s done in matplotlib.
How to Think Like a Computer Scientist
Learning with Python by Allen Downey, Jeff Elkner and Chris Meyers. This book is now available for sale at Lulu.com.
Snake Wrangling for Kids
Learning to Program with Python. Copyright (C) 2007. All Rights Reserved. SWFK has been completely rewritten and updated, with new chapters (including developing graphical games), and new code examples. It also includes lots of fun programming puzzles to help cement the learning. Published by No Starch Press, and available here: Python for Kids @ Amazon.com.
Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python - Chapters
Chapter 1 Read online: Chapter 1 - Installing Python Videos: Chapter 2 Read online: Chapter 2 - The Interactive Shell
