had many difficulties with even the most basic OO concepts.

Not only did Mark teach me Python, he also made OOP as

crystalline as possible.

No, I don't use this book as a reference. This is not a reference book.

It's a big HERYOOJ tutorial/comedy/philosophical treatise.

Need a reference? Check out the _Python_Reference_Manual_

and the _Python_Library_Reference_ by Guido van Rossum, the

legend himself. These are freely available at

Python Documentation Index

BTW, I now use the old Python/C combination on a daily basis.

It's a big, big win all around. (<don suit="asbestos"> ever

tried Perl/C++ ? Holy cow, that was nasty! <doff> ;)