Anyone know of any good free programming e-books. Anything would be good, but I'm especially interested in Python, cuz I have to write a huge Python program in a year and a half and have never touched the language in my life.
Also, I'm wondering where I should go from where I am. I know html, css, php, and Javascript, can run my nix system quite well, can do 3d CGI art with Blender. I'm 14, so I have a while to go before I can get any good college courses. I *have to learn Python, and would also like to try Perl, but I have no clue where to go from there. Should I give it a rest until I graduate in two years, focus on my ACT, or should I learn more and write some more programs to submit with my applications for scholarships to various schools? And if I should learn more, what should I learn?
There are many good textbooks available on the web for free, but I believe the majority are either on more advanced topics or for non-mainstream languages.
http://www.diveintopython.org/ is often recommended to learn Python. I found it a dreadfully dull slog though. You might have better luck with one of the books linked here: http://freecomputerbooks.com/langPythonBooksIndex.html
If you're feeling up to a bit of a challenge, and don't mind more unusual languages, there's http://www.htdp.org/, http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/ and http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net/
I think your teens is a good age to be programming. It'll help you decide if it's something you want to pursue, and if you do, you'll breeze through the first couple years of most CS programs.
Also, make sure to learn C at some point.
http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy/
This was my personal Python tutor. I liked it enough that I bought a hard copy, and it's also available in other languages.
Personally, I like using the official manuals (ie: Perl, Python, PHP) that offered on their respective official websites. The best part is that they're free and written by their creators.
How exactly do you program an e-book?
Read SICP.
>>7
LaTeX is a markup language, not a programming language.
TeX is Turing-complete, so...
>>2
I'm using this book to learn Python, and I think it is sort of good, but not the best book I've read on programming. I think that if I didn't know PHP from before, this book would really have confused me. Since >>1 knows PHP, I would recommend that book.
However, I'm using Python 3, and it was first when I came to page 50 that someone else told me there was a version of the book for that version: http://diveintopython3.org/
>Compared to Dive Into Python, it’s about 20% revised and 80% new material.
However, I chose to stick with the old book, since the new book has not been finalized. Also, I think the syntax seems pretty much the same. First problem I had, was when trying to use "print 'hello world'". Python 3 syntax is "print('hello world')".
>>5
My thought exactly when I first saw the title of the thread.
(sage because thread is old, so bumping wouldn't help many much)