Is it good to read Python Documentation to learn Python for a beginner? [closed]

Question

I've started learning Python recently and started reading Head First Python and Learn Python The Hard Way. Both books doesn't seem to explain everything in detail. I wanna know if it's a good idea to read Python Documentation instead of these books. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

The documentation has two parts; one is a basic tutorial which won't cover much beyond what you can find in the books, and the majority of it is a reference to the language itself. It is not a good learning resource, but it is (as good documentation is), an excellent reference for when you want to find out what a particular module does.

The documentation won't answer questions like "How do I download a file from the Internet?" (actually, it answers this specific question but the idea is that its not a teaching resource) but it will tell you what are all the methods of the urllib module, however you would already need to know that you need urllib to get the job done; this is the main problem when you are starting out.

I would say from the documentation you should probably skip the tutorial (especially if you are already reading a book), and then have a look at the standard library index which will give you an overview of what modules are available, broken down by function.

I would recommend the Programming Python book by Mark Lutz as a great starting point. It is quite a tome (at 1632 pages) but covers everything you need to know to be proficient in Python.

Once you have gone through that, the next book I would recommend is The Python Standard Library by Example by Doug Hellman. It is an excellent resource on how to use the comprehensive standard library.

Finally, after the two books you are now ready to solve real world problems and nothing helps more than having a cookbook/reference of sorts, for this I can recommend the following:

• Python in Practice
• Python Cookbook
• Writing Idiomatic Python