The number-one and only real reference I can suggest is the documentation section on python.org, the
tutorial is quite good and the Library Reference has a lot of information. That’s what I personally used learning the language.
Pure Python code’s execution speed is generally poor, its fully interpreted and does not compile to native code. If performance is a serious problem there are several solutions. The first is to rewrite the program’s hotspots in C; Python is implemented in C and can easily integrate modules and functions from C to improve performance. In fact there are some automated tools to make python wrappers for C libraries. I’ve never extended tried to do this so I can’t comment much.
The other solution to performance issues is to use the excellent support libraries which are generally in C. For example, the Numerical Python libraries provide matrix and array operations if you need to do serious number crunching and are generally very fast.
Most of the code I’ve written runs faster than I can notice anyway.
I have used Python under Linux (Debian, Slackware, Red Hat) and Windows (98, XP). Python has been ported to a pretty wide variety of systems, I would not expect that would be a problem.
Quote:
Originally posted by Pirateiam:
... I do have a few questions about Python. Do you reccomend any references for someone to help learn Python? What is the execution speed comparable to? What cross-platforms have you used with success? ...
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