newbie programming books

i,m very new at programming and i purchased one book that
didn't help very much.
could someone recommend a good book
or web site, for first time newbie python programmers.

Learning Python is a definate must buy first book for Python (coveres everything you need to get started with 2.2). It's clean and explains everything very well!

Nutshell is another good book. Covers allot, starting with the basics then gets more interesting but I'd see it more as a referance book than a starter.

Basically any Python book you can get on Amazon at the moment has and introduction to the language at the beginning (even the jython books have Python intro's). But the two above are the best beginners books that I've read!

Take care,
Mark.

One book I bought (which introduced me to Python - God bless !) but recommend you to NOT read if you're a 'n00b' is Teach yourself Python in 24 hours. The book itself is not BAD - but last time I checked, they still hadn't revised it and it does cover Python - yeah, Python 1.5.2, which uses, among other bad things, deprecated functions, like string.atoi() instead of the more general int(). Also, there's a section on Tkinter that's not very well explained.

Whenever you want a computer book, just head over to www.oreilly.com and see what they have to offer. I've always found their books to be of a high quality, and although their "Learning Python" title talks about C/C++ too much for my liking, it is still the best introduction to Python around.

I'd also recommend reading through the many short tutorials linked to on www.python.org, because I find that I learn things more thoroughly and easily if I read several slightly different guides to the same subject.

Oh, never read any book that claims it will teach you something really fast - they always give you a very poor understanding of the subject.

How to Think Like a Computer Scientist
Learning with Python

http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy/

The tutorial at python.org is also good for starting off if you don't want to buy a book yet.

I've found Mark Pilgrim's Dive Into Python very useful, download or view at http://diveintopython.org/. I'm not that far into it, so couldn't say how newbie friendly it is.

This seems like an interesting resource, from what I've read. On newbie-friendliness, I'll simply quote the book's subtitle : "Python for experienced programmers". 'Nuff said.

What's quite interesting is that the guide seems very practical ; there are, for example, 2 chapters on HTML and another on XML processing.

Complete, total newcomers may take a look on Learning to program. It goes the very basics and actually takes the time to explain simple things. Don't consider it as a complete introduction to Python, though : it only covers the most basic principles you'll need to get started.

absolutely you should have "Learning Python" under your pillow

The second edition of "Learning Python" is on the way, Amazon.co.uk says publishing date is october 1st. This book could also be a good one. Haven't read it myself, but it looks like a fun book targeted at beginners.