13.What Now?

Reading this tutorial has probably reinforced your interest in using Python —you should be eager to apply Python to solving your real-world problems. Whereshould you go to learn more?

This tutorial is part of Python’s documentation set. Some other documents inthe set are:

  • The Python Standard Library:

    You should browse through this manual, which gives complete (though terse)reference material about types, functions, and the modules in the standardlibrary. The standard Python distribution includes alot of additional code.There are modules to read Unix mailboxes, retrieve documents via HTTP, generaterandom numbers, parse command-line options, compress data,and many other tasks. Skimming through the Library Reference will give you anidea of what’s available.

  • Installing Python Modules explains how to install additional modules writtenby other Python users.

  • The Python Language Reference: A detailed explanation of Python’s syntax andsemantics. It’s heavy reading, but is useful as a complete guide to thelanguage itself.

More Python resources:

  • https://www.python.org: The major Python web site. It contains code,documentation, and pointers to Python-related pages around the web.

  • https://docs.python.org: Fast access to Python’s documentation.

  • https://pypi.org: The Python Package Index, previously also nicknamedthe Cheese Shop[1], is an index of user-created Python modules that are availablefor download. Once you begin releasing code, you can register it here so thatothers can find it.

  • https://code.activestate.com/recipes/langs/python/: The Python Cookbook is asizable collection of code examples, larger modules, and useful scripts.Particularly notable contributions are collected in a book also titled PythonCookbook (O’Reilly & Associates, ISBN 0-596-00797-3.)

  • https://pyvideo.org collects links to Python-related videos fromconferences and user-group meetings.

  • https://scipy.org: The Scientific Python project includes modules for fastarray computations and manipulations plus a host of packages for suchthings as linear algebra, Fourier transforms, non-linear solvers,random number distributions, statistical analysis and the like.

For Python-related questions and problem reports, you can post to the newsgroupcomp.lang.python, or send them to the mailing list atpython-list@python.org. The newsgroup and mailing list are gatewayed, somessages posted to one will automatically be forwarded to the other. There arehundreds of postings a day, asking (andanswering) questions, suggesting new features, and announcing new modules.Mailing list archives are available athttps://mail.python.org/pipermail/.

Before posting, be sure to check the list ofFrequently Asked Questions (also called the FAQ). TheFAQ answers many of the questions that come up again and again, and mayalready contain the solution for your problem.

Footnotes

[1]

“Cheese Shop” is a Monty Python’s sketch: a customer enters a cheese shop,but whatever cheese he asks for, the clerk says it’s missing.