Getting Back into Python for my Niece
This past weekend, I visited my sister in Iowa City, and my niece was there and asked about learning to program in Python. There were no classes in her graduate school (St. Louis University), and so I told her to just pick up a book and go at it. My sister pointed out that a lot of people learn better with the structure of a class, so I told my niece that I'd pick a book, and walk her through it - like a correspondence course in Python.
So I'm back in Python.
I sent her a few book recommendations - an O'Reilly book, and this book from Pragmatic Programmers. I wanted her to be able to read the excerpts of both and see which voice of the author she liked more. It was no surprise to me that she picked the Pragmatic Programmer's book - I have several myself, and they are excellent.
So this morning I'm getting the Pragmatic Programmer book, and scanning the first two chapters. I think it'll be better to use Python 3 from Homebrew as opposed to another source, just because it's self-contained, updatable, and simple. I need to write up a few notes for the first two chapters and then shoot them off to her with a link to a shared Dropbox folder for us to exchange files in - that was her idea, and a good one.
If I can just get these things downloaded on The Shop's WiFi, I'd be in business... but it's a pain in the neck, so it's taking a lot longer than it should. But it'll get there... eventually...