Learning to Program / Learning Python.

This post is a summary of some of the responses I've sent to people about learning to program computers as well as learning the Python programming language:

I've heard good things about the book, "Hello World! Computer Programming for Kids and Other Beginners", It's a first book on programming using Python. While it appears to be aimed at kids, I've heard some adults have found it to be a good gentle introduction as well.

•  Amazon: Hello World! Computer Programming for Kids and Other Beginners

See my other post about free on-line college level classes, for info on Computer Science 101.  This class is due to start April 23rd, 2012.  Hopefully it will be a good resource for people with no formal CS background.

The same professor, Nick Parlante, developed a class on Python for Google:

"Welcome to Google's Python Class -- this is a free class for people with a little bit of programming experience who want to learn Python. The class includes written materials, lecture videos, and lots of code exercises to practice Python coding."

• http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python-class/

There are a number of resources for programmers who know other languages to learn Python.  These include:

• Mark Pilgrim's Dive Into Python, and Dive Into Python 3, which are both available freely on-line, or can be purchased as regular print books. The original DiveIntoPython.Org site seems to have been pulled down. I'm not sure what's going on with this. This book seems to be a good intro for programers, though there are some experienced Python People who feel there are some problems with this work.
• The Python Wiki has a good list of Python for Programmer resources.
• The Python Tutorial on the main Python Documentation (docs.python.org) site is also pretty good.