In case some people don't get on well with the pluralsight course, there's a wealth of free Python resources out there. See the list on the /r/learnpython wiki:
I personally learned from "Dive into Python" which I recommend, it's nice and fast paced, aimed at people who already know programming in another language, and is linked there.
incidentally, on the "Python 2 vs Python 3" debate, the answer is simple, it's Python 3.6 or later.
Someone once said "It is not enough to simply stop writing Java. You must also learn to stop writing Java using other languages". People from a Java or C# background often take time to unlearn old habits and get on board with the Python way, or writing "Pythonic" code, as we say. (It's a cult. You may as well give in and get on board!)
Here's a few pointers:
- Stop writing classes (talk)
- Executiion in the Kingdom of nouns
- Fluent Python -- an excellent, excellent intermediate Python book. Highly recommended
- Python Epiphanies (also available for free on Youtube around the place) eye-opening insights into how Python works
- Trey Hunner's talks, blog posts, webcasts and, particularly, python morsels exercises make for great ongoing learning content.
Beyond the Django tutorial, I'd recommend:
- Two scoops of Django excellent collection of tips and best practices
- Django Unleashed - a monumental tome covering all sorts of aspects of django development that you won't find in the basic Django tutorial
- The Djangogirls tutorial - this shouldn't really be on this list, as it's
resource aimed at people who've never programmed before, but they're just such a nice organisation
that I had to link to them. Who knows, maybe if you're having a bad day and fancy something really nice and friendly,
running through their tutorial will give you some very basics of django, but also an intro to python and the command-line,
and get you deployed live onto the public internet. A breath of fresh air. Plus once you've learned Python and Django maybe you can volunteer to go and help coach at a Djangogirls workshop. There's one coming up in September in Manchester...
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Obey the Testing Goat! - I can't help recommend my own book. It's an introduction to TDD and Django at the same time, but also covers essentially everything I learned about professional software development -- version control, working incrementally, mocking and test isolation, refactoring systematically, linux server deployments (and testing them), automated deployments, continuous integration, and so on and so forth.
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Destroy all software the "classic" screencasts cover all sorts of stuff about Unix (good for ppl from the Windows world), tdd, and more, plus Gary is the fastest typist you will ever see. Many examples are in Ruby however (boo, hiss). The newer series are a lightning-fast introduciton to Computer Science concepts using live-coding, highly recommended for people who don't have a CS degree.