Learn to Program

I like "Learn to Program", by Chris Pine. It is very simple and straightforward. You get students into interactive exercises very quickly. You can preview it online: https://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/

It wasn't bad, but I don't agree with this being recommended as a best first book. Pine's code uses a fair amount of personal coding preferences without explaining them. To a beginner, this can be extremely confusing. How to Think like a Computer Scientist was a superior introduction in my opinion. It got me excited about learning a language comprehensively.

This is a good suggestion , as the Chris Pine book is a very easy, quick read. Also, the O'Reilly Head First books are usually good - with a fairly light-hearted, humorous approach for starters - and their "Head First Programming" book is Python based. ( http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596802387.do?sortby=publ... (http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596802387.do?sortby=publicationDate#PowerReview) ) Does it have to be a book ? Maybe a subscription to something like Code School ( http://www.codeschool.com ) would also be quite cool, as they have courses like "Try Ruby" and "Rails for Zombies" .

I strongly suggest Learn to Program by Chris Pine. http://pragprog.com/book/ltp2/learn-to-program I saw a non-technical friend go through it in the course of about a month last year. Though the book doesn't teach in Python, it does teach general programming concepts and my buddy is currently doing a lot of Python coding as a grad student. In fact he credits his programming skills as a giving him a huge edge in his research job. The author did an excellent job of making even basic exercises in the earliest chapters as engaging as they reasonably could be.