There isn't anything in computer science that you can't learn on your own. Sure, if you need to do some hardware fabrication or run your software on a cluster of 10,000 processors, you might need the backing of a university. But I wouldn't worry about that.Anand wrote:Hey decepto thaks for teh advise buddy. Where can I learn python? ANy links you can provide or books? Is it self learnable or I need to go to school? I'm not from a programming background- am an accountant! so is it something easily learnable? ( I know its not a very objective question, sorry)
Also whats your view about learning Max/msp?
thanks very much for the helpful comments.
Learning a language is interesting in that when a programmer picks up a new language, they do so in the hopes of applying the new language to a certain application. So before you start with python, I would ask: What do you want to build?
Here are some popular topics that most new people want do as their first project:
* A simple game (like pong or tetris)
* A web application (think Twitter, Facebook. Both of which started as simple web applications)
* Solving a math problem
Writing an audio application is fine, but you first need to understand how digital audio is represented in software. It's not difficult to learn, just keep that in mind when you start.
First things first though. You need a text editor and Python. There are a lot of free editors out there, but if I find one I like, I don't mind paying for it. If you're on a Mac, pick up textmate. If you're on windows, pick up E Text Editor.
Next, download and install python 2.5. Python 2.6 and 3.x are available, but the libraries for python always lag behind by a couple versions. If you want to create a simply game or graphical application, check out PyGame.
I'm not sure what libraries are available for real time audio processing in python, but I do know that you can do preprocessed audio in pure python without an libraries. In fact, you can do preprocessed audio in any language that will allow the output of a binary file (in this case, a WAV file). Again, here's where knowing how audio in digitally represented comes into play.
If you just want to play around with the language, google "Python tutorial". There are hundreds of great tutorials out there.