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1. Have her read ESR's How to Become a Hacker.

2. After that, start her on Learning to Program.

3. From there you can cover a little review material as well as some more advanced topics in Dive Into Python.

I made the mistake of leaving "Learning Perl" and "Learn to Program in C in 21 Days" lying around the house. My wife read them and understood them for the most part, but she's not exactly whipping out kernel modules. The track mentioned above is definitely better for, as you put it, a "terrified adult".

Actually, if anyone is interested in learning Python and doesn't mind reading a book on their computer, there's a bunch of free ebooks available on the Python Documentation page (as well as a comprehensive list of books that are only printed). I've read a few of them, most of them are pretty good, in particular "How to think like a Computer Scientist" is a very good text for a less experienced programmer and Bruce Eckel's "Thinking in Python" is a nicely comprehensive coverage of Python (not unlike his "Thinking in Java" and "Thinking in C++" books).

Even if you do mind reading books on your computer screen, most of these books (actually I think all of them) are also available as physical printed books as well.

Thinking In Python by Bruce Eckel
An Introduction to Python by Guido van Rossum, and Fred L. Drake, Jr. (Editor)
How To Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python by Allen Downey, Jeff Elkner and Chris Meyers
Dive Into Python: Python for Experienced Programmers by Mark Pilgrim
Text Processing In Python by David Mertz
Python Language Reference Manual by Guido van Rossum

I highly recommend Dive into Python, a free online book that's targeted at experienced programmers.

I've got to recommend Dive Into Python as a great, free, online Python book.

(PS. I own the dead-tree version of Python in a Nutshell, I think the above is nice to use as a while-programminng guide)

www.DiveIntoPython.org: It is one of the best python books I have read. In fact I go back to it every now and then just for a refresher. J

Another excellent free book for Python is Dive Into Python by Mark Pilgrim. It is available in HTML, PDF, Word 97, Windows Help, plain text, and XML formats.

This book has plenty of examples and pointers to further reading on each subject. It features good layout, use of colors, and typography which makes for easy reading and comprehension.

Dive Into Python, a free online book for advanced programmers

Python FAQT, user-expandable knowledge base with great questions and answers

Python Library Reference, ed. by Guido van Rossum and Fred L. Drake, Jr. [need I say more?]

Python Tutorial, ed. by Guido van Rossum and Fred L. Drake, Jr.

The Whole Python FAQ

Sorry, that should be Dive Into Python.

PyGoogle allows you to access the web API from Python. Download here. Python has no SOAP support in the standard library, but a working SOAP library is included with PyGoogle.

-Mark

Dive Into Python - a free Python book for experienced programmers

Clay Shirky wrote an excellent article on why intelligent agents (like the ones Berners-Lee is describing) are a dumb idea, regardless of the underlying infrastructure. The article is over a year old but still just as relevant as ever:

http://www.shirky.com/writings/bots.html

-M

You're smart; why haven't you learned Python yet? diveintopython.org

Learning Python is not hard (remember how long it took you to learn Perl?) -- you can do it in an evening by reading any one of these free (and Free) online books:

• Dive Into Python - written for the Slashdot crowd, it assumes you know one real language (like Perl, Java, or C++) and takes you from there. Steps through real code to teach you the language basics (and not-so-basics), and makes frequent comparisons to the language(s) you already know.
• How To Think Like A Computer Scientist (Python version) - better for those with less programming experience. Not as detailed, but gentler.
• Learning To Program - for those with no programming experience whatsoever who want to learn Python as their first programming language.

Once you've read any or those, you'll want to dig into some real code, so head over to the Python Knowledge Base for tons of real code examples, and Vaults of Parnassus for tons of free third-party modules and libraries.

-M

Neither ABCNews nor the Slashdot write-up seem to link to the actual Privacy International site or their 2001 US Big Brother Awards page.

Also, the ABCNews article and Slashdot write-up dwell entirely on the privacy violators, while the original site also mentions that

2 awards were also given to champions of privacy. The Brandeis Award is named after US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who described privacy as "the right to be left alone." The awards are given to those have done exemplary work to protect and champion privacy.

...and awards the Brandeis Award to...

• Evan Hendricks - 20 years of publishing the Privacy Times. Hendricks goes after companies that traffic in children's private data and tells Congress how important privacy is, since they don't seem to get it most of the time.
• Julie Brill - Vermont Attorney General's Office. Brill spearheaded Vermont's litigation against the tobacco companies, and she goes after banks you sell your private data, record companies that fix prices, and drug companies that try to stamp out generics.

These are the good guys (and girls). They deserve some recognition, too.

-M

You're smart; why haven't you learned Python yet? http://diveintopython.org

If you're behind the curve and just now figuring out that you should learn Python, do yourself a favor and read Dive Into Python.

Just as Python itself doesn't treat you like you're stupid, Dive Into Python assumes that you're smart and that you have a working knowledge of at least one other real language, be it Perl, Java, or C++. It was written with the Slashdot crowd in mind (well, the Slashdot crowd as I see it -- but I read at +2 nested reparented).

Oh, and it's under the GNU Free Documentation License. To quote everybody's favorite communist RMS, "Free software deserves free documentation."

Share and enjoy.

-M

We use XML-RPC on our Python-powered intranet to grab headlines from O'Reilly's free Meerkat wire service via Secret Lab's free xmlrpclib module. Dave Warner wrote an excellent article on XML-RPC and Python here, using Meerkat as an example of a real XML-RPC server.

If Python is not your thing, there are XML-RPC libraries for PHP and Perl. Rael Dornfest wrote an excellent article on Meerkat's XML-RPC interface here, with sample PHP and Perl code (as well as Python).

-M

You're smart; why haven't you learned Python yet? diveintopython.org

I am currently working on a US government web site. (OK, it's a state web site, but they are holding us to the federal rules because they know they're next...) Here's some practical advice:

1. Read the W3 Accessibility Initiative to get an idea of the concepts of making the web accessible. Contrary to popular opinion, the web is for everyone.
2. Use Bobby, a free automated tool written in Java that can check your entire site for accessibility problems. It categorizes problems based on priority level, checks pretty much everything listed in the WAI, and tells you what you still have to check manually that it can't check automatically.
3. Read the W3 Techniques for Web Accessibility to get an idea of how to implement the changes. Contrary to popular opinion, HTML 4 has many features specifically for blind/deaf/disabled users.
4. Test your site yourself. Use Lynx to see what your site looks like to the blind. Do all your images have meaningful ALT tags or LONGDESC tags? Do your tables have SUMMARY tags? Is your navigation usable without Javascript or Flash?
5. Set your text size to maximum to see what your site looks like to visually impaired users. You are using relative sizes for your fonts and percentages for your table widths, aren't you?
6. Turn off your speakers to see what your site looks like to the deaf. If you have audio feeds, do you also have transcripts? If you have video feeds, are they closed-captioned?

It's not rocket science once you know what you're doing. Personal anecdote: I applied the same principles to my own web site, even though I didn't have to and my friends told me I was wasting my time because "nobody uses Lynx anymore." In the first week, I got 10 Lynx visitors.

-M

You're smart; what haven't you learned Python yet? http://diveintopython.org/