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Books to learn coding

Wondering what the best books to learn Python are. Any guidance would be a great.

3 responses

Think Python
Allen B. Downey

DT ---

Although not books the following courses in Python are free through www.coursera.org

An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python (Part 1 & 2)
https://www.coursera.org/course/interactivepython1
https://www.coursera.org/course/interactivepython2
This is the best course but oriented towards the user interface and games. As an intro to Python it is very good. If you have some programming background the videos would get you up to speed quickly.

Principles of Computing (built around Python)
https://www.coursera.org/course/principlescomputing1
https://www.coursera.org/course/principlescomputing2
This is more general but still some good content.

Programming for Everybody (Python)
https://www.coursera.org/course/pythonlearn
This is the most basic python class online --- skip the first few videos and join at conditionals and loops....

In applying python to Quantopian/Zipline I have not found a good tutorial/book/class that covers numpy and pandas better than learning on your own. iPython is also not covered as well as I would like.

Computational Investing uses python to build a portfolio via MPT and is a very good course. One set of videos is a numpy tutorial and the examples used in the class are very good.
https://www.coursera.org/course/compinvesting1

Good luck!

You could try:

Python for Data Analysis: Data Wrangling with Pandas, NumPy, and IPython
by Wes McKinney
Link: http://amzn.com/1449319793

Also, if you are familiar with MATLAB, check out:

http://wiki.scipy.org/NumPy_for_Matlab_Users

Note that you don't need to write fancy Python object-oriented classes, etc. to use Quantopian. You can just write an old-school simple script.