Specifically "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python" is my favourite Al Sweigart book.

I would also recommend "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python" [1], as you are learning hands on with some practical stuff: from generating Excel-files to PDFs, from sending e-mails to work with files and folders. At the end you will have some tools to automate some of your daily tasks for real. Oh, and it's free to read as well.

[1] https://automatetheboringstuff.com/

I'm not much of a Python guy, but concur with this; I enjoyed this book and did get something out of it.

Best explanation of Regex that I have ever seen

> - A few python books from No Starch Press (notably those authored by Al Sweigart)

Yes for example https://nostarch.com/inventwithpython and https://nostarch.com/big-book-small-python-projects

I learnt ruby with Zed Shaw’s Learn Ruby the Hard Way. Was a really great experience!

Is Shaw's first Python book any good?

Shaw has had some strong opinions that have gone significantly against the mainstream viewpoint in Python. Whether he's right or not doesn't really matter - as an educator that is targeting the mainstream it's fairly important to stay on that and not introduce personal bias around these things. Unfortunately his criticism was often not very constructive.

despite my other comment here I do agree with you on this, especially remembering his comments on test tools, nose for example

Yeah, he pushed back hard against the Python 3 migration, by picking on a small number of trade-offs that he personally didn't like and using that to conclude that the entire endeavour was doomed. The Python 3 migration wasn't flawless by any means, but it was better than he made out.

I know his "criticism" also held back many from moving their libraries to Python 3 by sowing doubt in the community, and ultimately may have slowed down adoption overall.

I found his Learn Python3 The Hard Way to be a great series of exercises if you're starting out or starting again. You won't find -everything- on any topic, but the exercises are complete enough to get you rolling and seed the sort of patterns that will make you successful in looking for more material.

I had a little bit of Python(2) under my belt from general curiosity, and I've done some C++ in high school so I have some "CS Theory"

There is a "more" python version out now https://learncodethehardway.org/more-python-book/

Amazon ( the "newer" version proposed is not, it's his python2 book ) https://www.amazon.com/Learn-More-Python-Hard-Way/dp/0134123...

If you’re a pure beginner with zero programming experience, yes. If you’ve programmed a few scripts and have done a flask web app, his first book might be too easy.

If you ignore his strong opinions, it can be good. Although he was (is?) very much hated back in the day (when Python 2 was still mainstream), many many noobs did benefitted from his book. So I'd say give it a try.

> and from reading open source code.

Do you just search for projects in the language your using on github?

Yes, and I would typically search for simple projects using keywords such as “micro”, “small”, “tiny”, or “pico”.

I would then try to re-implement the “getting started” code in the readme from scratch, like a little programming puzzle. If I can’t figure it out, I‘ll add in some debugger breakpoints, inspect the stack trace to understand how it works, then code the needed methods / classes as I go.

If you’re a ruby programmer, soveran’s work in github can be read in a day or two. I specifically like cuba (micro webframework) and mote (microtemplate).