[scott_s]

Completely agree. The entire premise of Dive Into Python is to throw a bunch of idiomatic Python code at you and explain what it does. It's explicit in the text and implied by the title.

Personally, I found this refreshing. Instead of starting out with "This is an assignment, and this is an if statement..." he shows chunks of code - or whole programs - that accomplish some task. As an already experienced programmer, I would then inspect the code, try to figure out what it did, then read his descriptions for things that weren't obvious. For me, this is a much faster way to learn than for the author to assume I've never programmed before.

Didn't Zed declare a while ago that the aggressive, swearing persona was just an act to demonstrate how geeks gravitate to strong personalities? His current form doesn't have naked girls or guys wailing on guitars, but he's still doing the same thing.

[Scriptor]

He wrote earlier that he's basically doing both, with http://oppugn.us/ for rants, which can be contributed by other people as well, and http://sheddingbikes.com/ for more thoughtful and calmer essays.