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Mark Pilgrim
Personal blog · diveintopython.orgprogrammingwriting
Mark Pilgrim writes Dive into Python: Free Tutorials, Books to Learn Python, a personal blog at diveintopython.org about programming and writing. Since 2007, 53 different Hacker News readers have linked it 60 times, most often “Dive Into Python | Online book”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
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60mentions?
53HN people?
2007–2011first – last linked?
Explore the power of Python in the 2026: see our free tutorials and obtain the "Dive into Python" book by Mark Pilgrim in PDF and Kindle version.
Most-linked posts?
- /29 people · 31 mentions · first linked 2008-05-05
- /11 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2007-09-24
- /toc/index.html3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-08-23
- Dive Into Python | Online book3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2008-04-01
- /2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2008-07-28
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-02-23
What Hacker News says?
"eg. 'python for programmers' would not need the first half of it dedicated to explaining strings, loops etc." Mark Pilgrim's http://diveintopython.org/ is what you describe.
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on “Learn C The Hard Way”Submitted Dive Into Python | Online book as a story · 1 points
HN discussion"Like most languages, Python has the concept of private elements:" http://diveintopython.org/object_oriented_framework/private_... Does that count for encapsulation?
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on “Don't distract new programmers with OOP”They do it with other books as well: Practical Common Lisp: http://gigamonkeys.com/book/ Dive Into Python: http://diveintopython.org/
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on “Pro Git - CC licensed book on Git by Scott Chacon”Also, Dive into Python ( http://diveintopython.org/ ) is excellent, and the text is free online.
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on “Python 2.6 Released”in fact to reiterate have a look at the awesome fibonacci example showing power of generators [1]: def fibonacci(max): a, b = 0, 1 while a < max: yield a a, b = b, a+b To run the function do: >>> for n in fibonacci(1000): ... print n, 0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610 987 [1] http://diveintopython.org/dynamic_functions/stage6.html
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on “Dive Into Python 3 (online book)”To add to the free Python book fest, Learn Python the Hard Way http://learnpythonthehardway.com is excellent for beginners. If you do know how to program, Dive Into Python http://diveintopython.org is also excellent. They're both free. I've been programming for awhile, but I read both books and took useful things away from both of them.
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on “Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python (Free e-Book)”"Dive into Python" contains chapter on XML processing[1] that uses grammar defined in XML to generate random English passages. A very funny and informative reading. [1] http://diveintopython.org/xml_processing/
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on “Generating random text”>> Try Mark Pilgrim's Dive Into Python. I have to disagree with the book choice - for this case. The first sentence on the main site for the book[1]: >> Dive Into Python is a Python book for experienced programmers. It might be a great book, but not for someone who knows nothing about programming. [1] http://diveintopython.org/
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on “How can I learn to program? ”You could probably get away with not knowing how to code, but even an elementary understanding helps you to know what is and isn't possible. Spend a week or two getting the fundamentals of programming (even if you won't be able to program very well at the end of that time), and you'll be in a much better place. Try Mark Pilgrim's Dive Into Python. It's free online, and python is one of the better introductory langua…
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on “How can I learn to program? ”So, not http://www.diveintopython.org ?
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on “Dive into Python 3”Dive Into Python has a couple of good chapters on unit testing. Maybe you're looking for something more advanced though. If so, I think he gives some references for further reading. http://diveintopython.org/unit_testing/index.html
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on “"Joel Spolksy is wrong about my work" - Kent Beck”Mark Pilgrim's http://diveintopython.org/ is a good continuation to this book if you're interested in learning Python. It's also free, and there's a more recent version for Python 3 at http://diveintopython3.org/
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on “Zed Shaw is teaching two four-week Python classes (online)”Been going through a similar process, here are some links highly recommended - MIT OCW Python course http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput... Learning Python, Fourth Edition, By: Mark Lutz http://my.safaribooksonline.com/book/programming/python/9780... Official docs and tutorial http://docs.python.org/tutorial/index.html A couple of others http://personalpages.tds.net/~kent37/stories/00020.htm…
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on “HN: I want to trade my finance knowledge for python/django mentorship”You can do one liners with lambda functions in Python. e.g: lambda x: x*2 http://diveintopython.org/power_of_introspection/lambda_func...
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on “First Impressions of Python from a Java Developer”I don't know how useful that opencourseware will be to you. There are other free resources on the Internet. http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld/ This is a free e-book written by a professional programmer that teaches basic programming, primarily using python. For more info on learning Python, there are lots of resources such as the official tutorial at the Python web site: http://docs.python.org/tutorial/ Th…
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on “A Gentle Introduction to Programming Using Python”http://diveintopython.org/ is a good python intro that assumes you already know how to program in some other language.
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on “Ask HN: How to learn Javascript and HTML for devs coming from C++/Java/Python?”You may want more recent resources about Python, because Python has changed significantly since 1997. Mark Pilgrim's book Dive Into Python (Also free online at http://diveintopython.org ) is a pretty good intro to the language, and does a good job of exploring its strengths. (And, seriously, people. #1?)
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on “Why Python?”First, please stop labeling yourself as an introvert/failure/whatever. It will do you good. Being an introvert is first and foremost the ability to extract energy from what you're doing rather than needing an audience to survive. It does not mean, however, that you should not talk to people just because you don't feel like talking. Everyone needs at least a couple friends to talk to. By only talking to yourself, it'…
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on “Ask HN: Having emotional breakdown ”Dive into Python: http://diveintopython.org/ And then I bought Python in a Nutshell, which covers a lot of things in more depth, with decent examples. Recommended.
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on “What did you use to teach yourself Python?”Byte of Python: http://www.swaroopch.com/notes/Python Dive into Python: http://diveintopython.org/ Both great and free books.
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on “What did you use to teach yourself Python?”The linked article is seven years old. For more up-to-date Python TDD techniques, see chapters 13 & 14 of Mark Pilgrim's 'Dive Into Python' (available free at http://diveintopython.org/ ), and for Python 3 (though plenty applies to Python 2) chapter 9 of 'Dive Into Python 3' (available free at http://diveintopython3.org/ )
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on “Test Driven Development in Python”http://diveintopython.org/
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on “HN Show & Tell: the WordPress Console”I end up going back to "Dive Into Python" for reference. http://diveintopython.org/ My other two references are the Python Standard Library Docs ( http://docs.python.org/library/index.html ) and StackOverflow.
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on “Ask HN: ______ is to Python as K&R is to C?”I'm going to say learn/refresh your python. it'll let you focus on the programming, and not have to worry about language specific constructs. Good refresher: http://www.diveintopython.org/
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on “Ask HN: Confused semi-newbie programmer needs some advice.”It's a significantly better programming language; I don't think you'll be able to find anyone who knows both PHP and Python and will disagree with that statement. PHP is a very simple language with built-in features for web application development. Python is an advanced, multi-paradigm general purpose language that has evolved over more than a decade. Here are a few Python language features that I seriously miss whe…
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on “What do hackers think of PHP?”When talking about python I found http://diveintopython.org/ to be an excellent book for beginners.
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on “Ask HN: Okay okay, I'll learn to program...now what?”"Python!" If you decode to explore Python, try the Dive Into Python tutorial ( http://diveintopython.org/ ) followed by the Django tutorial ( http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/intro/tutorial01/ ) seeing as how you know php and two databases. Both are short and can be completely finished in a weekend of work. Do let us know what you learned !Good Luck!
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on “Ask HN: I want to build/learn something this weekend - suggestions?”Yeah. For Python: http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld/ http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy/ http://www.diveintopython.org/ I also read the O'Reilly book on Python - 'Programming Python' There's Python.org for all docs, of course. For Django - http://www.djangoproject.com - they have a cool tutorial on the front page, and http://www.djangobook.com , then move to the documentation from djangoproject.
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on “I have a great idea for a webapp, but hardly any programming knowledge. What should i do?”I think the "non-technical" bit is superfluous—we're all non-technical when we first learn to code. I learnt to code at 14 after asking my GCSE ICT (as in, Word, Excel, and FrontPage—that's the sad state of IT education in the UK) teacher what the "header files" I saw in the Deus Ex SDK were. He introduced me to Java, and, to be very cliché, the rest is history. The main "textbook" I read was "Introduction to Progra…
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on “Ask HN: Non-technical people, how did you learn to code?”
