I’ll assume you’re on a Debian-based/derived system and have access to apt-get.  If not, you can probably install all of these by downloading individually or relying on easy_install/PyPI.

Python

These are the resources to get you familiar with the language, culture, and communities.  I personally like to start with books.  I’ve read many, but thanks to Python’s clean/simple design, only a couple are actually necessary to make you proficient.

Install: sudo apt-get install python python-ipython python-setuptools

• python -c 'import this' (Zen of Python)
• Python glossary
• Python tutorial
• Python Standard Library
• Python wiki
• PyPI
• Book: Python in a Nutshell (best Nutshell book ever written, regexes and libs coverage pretty comprehensive, but hoping for Py3k coverage soon!)
• Alternative free/open book: Dive Into Python
• Book: Python Cookbook (also online ASPN Cookbook)
• PEP 8 (style guide)
• Programming FAQs
• Editor configuration (vim: set ts=4 ai sw=4 et tw=72; research equivalents your favorite editor; emacs good alternative)
• ReStructuredText (ReST)
• Python mailing list
• Python IRC
• Find a Python user group (ours is Portland)
• The here/near future (Python 3)

Tools

If you only get one thing out of this article, let it be this: Use ipython to interactively discover the language and libraries. It’s the most powerful REPL of any language I’ve encountered, and is what really makes Python rise to the top for learnability.

Install: sudo apt-get python-ipython pylint pyflakes pychecker mercurial python-nose pydb python-coverage python-sphinx

• Interactive play: ipython (try: foo.<tab> and foo? and discover everything!)
• PyPI installables: easy_install
• Testing: nose
• Debugging: pydb (extended Python debugger)
• Lint/correctness: pylint, pyflakes, pychecker
• Code coverage: python-coverage

I’ve skipped some really useful tools that go beyond the essentials.  If you’re going to become a Python zealot, you’ll want most of your tools to be written in Python.  These might include Mercurial, Bazaar, Trac, MoinMoin, Sphinx.  We still need investigate the use of Selenium and Twill for web testing.  (We’re now using PostgreSQL for all our database work for several reasons, but one of the most significant is its REPL similar in introspective capability to ipython.)

Django

Our choice of Django was not an easy one, but after some time with Pylons and TurboGears (and even RoR), it was the winner.  It’s also arguably sort of the official Python web framework and does appear to have critical mass (AFAICT).  The Django website lists many of the following resources pretty clearly, but I have found these to be the most useful, and so worth enumerating here.

Install: sudo apt-get python-django python-psycopg2 python-sqlite3

• Django tutorial
• Django cheat sheet
• Book: The Django Book (especially chs 3-5,12)
• Django documentation
• Django Master Class presentation
• Django FAQs
• Django mailing list
• Testing Django page
  
• Long Django testing discussion
• Django Debug Toolbar
• Especially informative blog: B-List
• Most Django blogs

Please include any of your favorite resources for Python/Django newbies in the comments.

Over the years I’ve gotten a lot of value out of reading Amazon reviews. But only recently have I actually become a contributor to their sophisticated social system (a different S3 .

Now I’m discovering some great benefits to writing reviews — let me share them with you. Here are the reasons it might be worthwhile to be writing reviews of practically everything you read:

• Accredit yourself as a reader/writer/analyst/critic. Put your thoughts where people can see them.
• Easily maintain a nicely enumerated list of personally recommended books. Amazon does the work for you.
• Your reviews have an RSS feed that others can subscribe to.
• That means you now have another blog, and you can gain some typical blogging benefits by simply creating more quality reviews.
• Another badge/chiclet for your blog. You can cross-link your reviews and blog. Bloggers already like to sport the “Amazon Wishlist” widget, but an “Amazon Reviews” version (not yet created) is even better.
• Your Amazon profile may have high page-rank for your name. It’s the top result for my name!
• Auto-post your reviews as tweets. Incorporate the feed with twitterfeed.
• Point your friends to your reviews and they’ll be led to your interests and activity. Persuade them to read what you read.
• Your reviews make good links. Just like you commonly link to your existing blog posts, you can also link to your reviews (instead of the books directly). E.g., I’ve adopted Django.
• Your review stream is personal. Forget the fact that the book you’re reviewing already has 200 reviews; most don’t. People will still see yours regardless.
• People with similar interests will arrive at your content frequently — c’mon, it’s Amazon!
• Authors might end up sending your their books for free, if your reviews are top-notch.
• Immortalize the reading experience by spending a meager 30 minutes recording your thoughts. You already spent 20 hours reading it.
• Remember what you read. You’ll go through the book a second time to create the review and this will ingrain it in your memory.
• Be encouraged to read more. Maybe set a goal to write a review every week (and thus read more).
• Be inclined to highlight key points to ease review. Those will also be valuable years later when you revisit a book.
• Improve writing ability. Practice makes perfect.
• Think differently about what you’re reading when you know you’ll be writing about it. Get practice at summarizing and reading at high and low levels.
• Reviews don’t have to be long. Amazon even recommends brevity. It’s usually pointless to write just a couple sentences as a record that you read a book, though sometimes it works.

If you want to know what I’m reading (and maybe some other things about me), you can subscribe to my Amazon review feed, or just follow me on Twitter. I hope to be growing my review list rapidly.

Don’t forget to be clicking “yes” for all the reviews you find helpful!

Resources:

• How To Read A Book
• A nice article on How to Write a Book Review

In a future post I’ll discuss what it takes to become a top reviewer (despite my present rank of 893,844), or “vine voice”, what are the benefits, and whether it’s worth pursuing.

Unfortunately, books are not generally free. Publishers are finally seeing some light and letting some of their books be free online. Some of the best books I’ve read are free downloads. I still often buy those anyway, for the benefits mentioned above. But having them searchable and copy-paste-able is a huge boon for quick use. I hope the trend continues.

Amazon has proven to be a great way to find and explore any book. Through their review system I usually have a pretty good idea whether any given book is worth purchasing. The conundrum is that I find a lot of books are worth it! I spend way too much money there. I haven’t very well kept track of what my family gives to Amazon in a year, but I’m sure I don’t want to know. My wish-list is out of control. So what can I do?

I’ve been in the habit of avoiding my local library, since my wife’s late fees have become a sensitive matter. But she spends so much time browsing around for books there that I was compelled to check out the system. Although the site is some ASPX crap, it actually works okay once you’ve figured out how to work around some oddities. All you really need is to be able to search and request. So I went through the exercise of wading through my Amazon wish-list to see what the library actually had. Surprisingly, there were a lot. My searches included: blog, blogging, python (already got this one covered; just for fun), django, lisp, javascript, seth godin, and a few other recommended titles. The most popular Amazon blogging books were in, and the Django book was on its way — a couple copies! There was even a lisp book, but it didn’t look much good. Guess I’ll still have to drop the $44 on Practical Common Lisp. But in general, the library will likely become my first stop before clicking Amazon’s dreaded “Place your order” button.

The library system is set up to share books among some 10 locations. All you have to do is reserve a book, and they ship it to your local station. Their calling system is pretty cool. We get phone calls almost nightly in the robotic festival voice: You have… 3… items being held for you. Can’t wait to get those Seth Godin books.

Be sure to check out your local library system and see what they’ve got. You should even think about donating some of your books so you can be a part of feeding this useful public system.

I could be posting this article as a review on Amazon, but there are already 579 reviews of it, so why make another there (maybe I’ll copy this there eventually)? My real intent in this post is to spark your interest in the book and get you pick up a copy and absorb every nugget, so your relationships will increase and improve. I seem to remember hearing something about the book some years ago, but I think I was put off by the title — I don’t want to win friends, I just like to make them. Don’t worry; the book is really just about improving yourself.

Breakdown

One complaint I have is that the table of contents does not very well summarize the maxims. They are, however, listed in a table at the end of each of the sections. I’ll combine them here by their major sections.

Fundamentals for handling people:
Don’t be critical. Be sincerely appreciative, not flattering. Arouse in the other person an eager want, by focusing on their needs instead of yours.

Making people like you:
Get others to do most of the talking. Listen well, and make them feel important. Then they’ll feel so good about being listened to that they’ll do anything for you.

Win people to your way of thinking:
Always start in a friendly way, and be dramatic! See things from the other person’s point of view, and be sympathetic with that view.

Leadership:
Give lots of genuine praise, and be encouraging. Talk about your own mistakes first, and make his faults seem easy to correct. Ask questions instead of giving orders. Give the other person person a fine reputation to live up to, and let him save face.

My Experience

Some of the lessons in the book are especially challenging to apply; e.g., making other people feel like your ideas are their own. A fundamental part of an entrepreneur’s livelihood is idea generation. But ideas supposedly are not terribly valuable on their own (it’s the execution that counts), so maybe this maxim is still valid. This seems to underscore the importance of having a lot of trust in your business partner(s).

I’ve noticed that a lot of people don’t call me by my name; maybe just because it’s slightly uncommon. I do make an effort to remember someone’s name and use it with some frequency. It was encouraging to hear Carnegie underscore this. He’s right — it does feel good when someone calls me Micah.

I’m going to change my approach to making requests of people. I have a habit of getting right to the point and immediately stating what I want and why. That’s probably why so many of my requests go unanswered! A general theme in the book is that getting what you want involves some indirection. I.e., think of things from the other person’s perspective and present things from an angle of how they are the beneficiary.

Summary

Overall, lots of Carnegie’s ideas are common sense, but it still was useful to hear him make them concrete. Some of the principles are not so obvious and I probably wouldn’t have ever discovered them on my own. I toted this book around with me for a couple weeks and found that having the ideas fresh in my head greatly improved my interactions with people. For this reason, I think this book (or its summary) would be highly valuable to skim over before every important meeting.