[kwlug-disc] Scripting in Linux and unit.d

Paul Nijjar paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca
Mon Jan 9 11:56:59 EST 2012


On Sun, Jan 08, 2012 at 12:19:25PM -0500, Darcy Casselman wrote:
> A gentleman named Albert O'Connor is interested in starting up WatPy,
> a local Python user group.  He's tentatively scheduled Wednesday,
> February 8 as the date of an initial organizational meeting.  I don't
> have any other details, but I'll let him know there's interest here.

It may be helpful to distinguish "User Group" from "Beginner
tutorial/course". That has been my experience with KWLUG, anyways.

As some of you know I used the KW Freeskool infrastructure for the
Linux Literacy course. That may not reach the demographics you want
(and you may not want to be associated with their political
affiliation) but they can offer resources if you are interested. 
http://kwfreeskool.wordpress.com

I think both Dive into Python and Learn Python the Hard Way lack
sufficient exercises to be really good training materials, so you will
have to come up with your own. An interesting mix might be to use one
of these books in conjunction with the Project Euler
(http://projecteuler.net) series of problems. 

Another book that looks promising is "Building Skills in Python":
http://www.itmaybeahack.com/homepage/books/python.html

You could also turn to open courseware. Here is a StackExchange
post with some good resources: 

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4463098/where-can-i-find-a-good-online-python-course

All of this depends on your audience. It makes a big difference
whether you are trying to get experienced programmers up to speed in a
language, or whether your are trying to get people to learn
programming with Python as the vehicle.

Sorry for the wall of text.

- Paul


> 
> Darcy.
> 
> On Sun, Jan 8, 2012 at 12:09 PM, Michael Savage <msavage at golden.net> wrote:
> > I am interested.
> > Mike
> >
> >
> > On 08/01/2012 3:33 AM, Bob Jonkman wrote:
> >>
> >> Charles McColm and I were recently bitten by the
> >> "We-want-to-be-Python-programmers" bug. On Friday at Ubuntu Hour we met a
> >> fellow from London (ON).  Sadly, my memory has lost its parity bits and I
> >> don't recall his name. Maybe "Mars" on the Ubuntu IRC channel? Anyway, he's
> >> a professional Python programmer, and he said he might be willing to come
> >> back to guide some of us newbies towards a life of Pythony goodness.  He
> >> suggested we start with Mark Pilgrim's "Dive Into Python" or Zed A. Shaw's
> >> "Learn Python The Hard Way".
> >>
> >> Is there interest in learning Python within the ranks of KWLUG?  All we
> >> need is a project to work on... The KWPUG  group seems to be defunct, but we
> >> can strike out on our own.
> >>
> >> --Bob.
> >>
> >> Dive Into Python http://www.diveintopython.net/
> >> Learn Python The Hard Way http://learnpythonthehardway.org/
> >> KWPUG http://kwpug.org
> >> Ubuntu Canada IRC channel irc://irc.freenode.net/#ubuntu-ca or
> >> http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=ubuntu-ca
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> John Van Ostrand <john at netdirect.ca> wrote:
> >>
> >>   Hi Colon,
> >>
> >>   Scripting in Linux relies heavily on the vast array of programs
> >>   either directly or indirectly.
> >>
> >>   Bash is the command shell and is commonly used for scripting,
> >>   especially in system start up. It uses external programs heavily. I
> >>   usually start with bash and if it proves poor for the task I move to
> >>   perl by massaging the script.
> >>
> >>   Perl is a very flexible and powerful scripting language and it
> >>   borrows a lot of syntax from bash, awk and grep. So learning bash
> >>   helps with perl. It works well for parsing text files.
> >>
> >>   Python seems to be one of the more recently popular scripting. With
> >>   add-ons it's used for Fedora admin Gui programs. It also handles
> >>   threading well and has lots of other add-on modules.
> >>
> >>   There are lots of other options but these are the common workhorse
> >>   apps for system-level scripting.
> >>   Bash and the common linux commands are worth getting familiar with.
> >>   Regular expressions are also commonly handy. These are the basics
> >>   that I findf handy all the time.
> >>
> >>   What are you trying to do?
> >>
> >>   ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>   *From*: kwlug-disc-bounces at kwlug.org
> >>   *To*: KWLug Discussion
> >>   *Sent*: Sat Jan 07 18:48:02 2012
> >>   *Subject*: [kwlug-disc] Scripting in Linux and unit.d
> >>
> >>   I'm not a programmer but I do understand some fundamentals and
> >>   looking to learn some scripting so that I can automate some tasks.
> >>   What would be a good way to learn this stuff.
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> kwlug-disc at kwlug.org
> >> http://kwlug.org/mailman/listinfo/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org
> >>
> >
> >
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-- 
http://pnijjar.freeshell.org 


- Paul




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