• Python Education Summit & Python Learning Resources #2

Hello everyone!

First off, we'd like to tell you about the upcoming 2015 Python Education Summit in Montréal, Canada. There's going to be an array of talks on Python and Education prior to PyCon 2015's main conference! A full description of each talk will be coming soon, but at the moment you can check out the Education Summit schedule and register for the conference.

Now let's talk about learning!

After getting your feedback on a previous blog entry regarding Python learning resources, we’ve decided to write an additional «courses and books» roundup, but make it more Python 3 oriented!

As you may know, Python is one of the most popular programming languages, and definitely is one of the most flexible and beginner friendly. Here, at Checkio, we’re doing our best to make your experience with Python as much fun as possible, but sometimes, basic language knowledge is not enough. This is why we’re providing you a great list of useful materials that you can use to improve your Python-fu!

One thing that never gets old is official Python Tutorial. It gives you basic level of understanding what’s happening in those magical “*.py” files and why do you need to use so many whitespaces. It also introduces many of Python’s most noteworthy features, and will give you a good idea of the language’s flavor and style. After reading it, you will be able to read and write Python modules and programs.

For complete beginners or even non-programmers there are several resources that will significantly help in desire of learning Python:

  • TreeHouse Python Basics Course If you're new to Python, this is the place to start. In this course, we'll take a look at some of the most common and important bits of the language, how to use them, and then put them together into several different handy scripts.
  • After Hours Programming courses explains all the basic stuff python consists of, very helpful for early adopters.
  • A Byte Of Python [PDF] without controversy best book for any beginner, even some guys from Checkio admire this book. Even better! If your native language is not english, this book is available in many other languages, thanks to awesome Python community!
  • Non-Programmer's Tutorial for Python 3 with name speaking for itself is simple, yet informational tutorial that teaches some important basics of Python 3
  • Computer Science Circles courses guides user through most important parts of Python, it also features useful cheatsheet [PDF]. You can also print this and this cheatsheets, which are quite helpful, when it comes to speed of looking into python syntax for beginners.

For more advanced programmers, who already knows the basics there are some useful courses and materials to read and enjoy:

In case books and interactive courses and tutorials that we’ve mentioned above aren’t suiting your needs, you can always check awesome compilation of materials on Python Wiki.

Again, thanks to our community, especially @suic and @veky, we’ve decided to explain differences between Pyhton interpreters.

As you know, there are two major development branches of Python: Python 2.x and Python 3.x which are different from each other in some terms.

Here’s some articles that will help you understand how exactly those two differs from each other:

We’d like to hear your thoughts, is there any topic you want us to cover in more detailed way?

Thanks everyone for being such a great community!

Checkio Team.

Welcome to CheckiO - games for coders where you can improve your codings skills.

The main idea behind these games is to give you the opportunity to learn by exchanging experience with the rest of the community. Every day we are trying to find interesting solutions for you to help you become a better coder.

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