[projectileboy]

If you're learning to program from scratch, you really need to start with Zed Shaw's "Learn Python the Hard Way" http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/ . This is going to be much better for you than the MIT and the O'Reilly stuff.

[OpenAlgorithm]

Great, thanks for your advice, it looks like a great book with lots of top exercises.