I have downloaded the Python white papers and have installed IDLE. But programming is a new area for me, and well what do you recomend I should read, try, practice to build my knowledge on the subject.

When starting to learn how to program, it's always important to start small and not get frustrated at the seeming simplicity and stupidity of initial programs. Good advanced programming requires a solid foundation, jumping into the deep end too quickly often leads to people burning out and giving up, and their code is convoluted, hard to read and understand and often doesn't work.

Where you focus really depends on where you hope to go with your programming. Games, for example, need a strong knowledge of maths and a basic knowledge of Physics can be useful. Other programming areas have their own requirements etc.

Anyway, some tutorials that you may find useful:
http://honors.montana.edu/~jjc/easytut/easytut/
A Python tutorial for non-programmers. Looks pretty good, I haven't run through it myself though.

http://docs.python.org/tut/tut.html
A more advanced tutorial.

I wish you well and hope you enjoy programming!

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Daniel Punch
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Here is the tutorial I am using:

http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld/

I find it is very easy to follow. The author of the webpage is the author of a book on learning Python, and the webpage has almost all of the content that the book does.

I learned QBasic first so learning Python is very easy for me. QuickBasic is almost identical, except that in Python you can do lots more, and Python is still supported and updated, while QuickBasic isn't, as Microsoft dumped it and moved on to VisualBasic.