Programming Languages

Many of Python's features are derived from other programming languages: the influences of C, Modula-3 and Icon are the most significant.

General Titles

Handbook of Programming Languages, Vol. 3; various authors; Paperback.

Mark Lutz contributed a chapter which introduces Python, provides a short tutorial, peeks at Python/C integration, and shows a few larger examples at the end. Some of it parallels Programming Python, but most of the examples are new, and many expand on ideas in that book. The chapter was written a year ago, but is still mostly up to date. The Handbook volume itself also includes a Tcl/Tk chapter by Cameron Laird, as well as chapters on Perl, awk, SQL, and others.

C

Practical C Programming; Steven Oualline; Paperback.

Lisp and Scheme

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs; Harold Abelson, Gerald Jay Sussman, Julie Sussman; Hardcover.

"It came out of the course notes for the basic freshman programming course (6.0001?) at MIT, and is an excellent book about programming principles. Uses Scheme."

The Little Schemer; Daniel P. Friedman, Matthias Felleisen; Paperback.

" 'The Little Lisper' (the predecessor to this book) is a remarkably lucid, concise, effective, and well focused book. ... a small, older, hard to find book that should be on the required reading list for anyone serious about doing software. It is also a book that a complete novice can learn Lisp, and a lot of deep concepts, from in under a week. Its presentation is clear, its examples are excellent; not only does it teach the language, but how it works under the covers too."

Modula-3

Modula-3; Samuel P. Harbison; Paperback.
Systems Programming with Modula-3; ed. Greg Nelson; Paperback. (Out of print.)

In his forward to Programming Python, Guido van Rossum writes "Besides ABC, my main influence was Modula-3. This is another language with remarkable elegance and power, designed by a small, strong-willed team (most of whom I had met during a summer internship at DEC's Systems Research Center in Palo Alto)."

Perl

Advanced Perl Programming; Sriram Srinivasan; Paperback.

"Contains some very favorable comparisons between Python, Perl, and other related tools. Moreover, the author says he's an 'unabashed admirer of Python', and considers it his favorite OO scripting language, which says a lot, coming from a Perl book author. The book also discusses some of the same topics covered in current Python books, and so serves as a base of comparison (Tk, OOP, extending and embedding, and so on). Check the book's index for Python."