I just completed my first Python app for public consumption, and I was learning as I was coding. I've played on the outskirts of the language for a few years, but until this project I'd never really immersed myself in it. I ended up being confused a lot. So, I DO have some relevant thoughts:
1. The Python official documentation is not great, but it's not bad either. Some of it seems outdated, some of it is a bit hard to parse, some of it assumes more background knowledge on the part of the reader than is justified. Somebody mentioned the Django documentation. I've looked at it a bit, and it's *very* nice. I do think that the PSF could take some clues from its style and approach. But those are pretty minor gripes. I've learned a lot from referencing the documentation, and its still my first go-to source when I'm stuck. 2. The Python Community: Jopie91 wrote "I will no doubt piss off quite a few people with this statement, but the community around Python is one of the most hostile and unhelpful communities around any programming-related topic that I have ever seen – and with that I am not just referring to #python on Freenode, but to communities with a dense population of Python developers in general. This point actually consists of several separate attitudes and issues." There, I'd have to say he's very, very wrong. When I have on occasion asked questions on this group I've never been flamed, and I've always had people give me thoughtful answers that obviously took some effort to compose. My most recent question here concerned something that was thought to be a bug, but was due more to my own unfamiliarity with the material combined with what I'd suggest really was some ambiguity on the part of the documentation. Nevertheless, even with the misunderstandings, my questions were treated respectfully, and that's all I ask. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
