As a python newbie, I couldn't disagree more.

I would have saved hours while working on (and possibly completed) the recent Stripe CTF. Frankly, I started to dislike the python docs thoroughly. However, I'm very much looking forward to the much-rumored new docs--I very much dig the language.

As an example to my point, however, look at the two side-by-side as an aspiring tinkerer with the desire to send data over a socket. To me, the aforementioned tutorial is miles ahead of the python docs.

We may have an unreconcilable difference in philosophy here. I understand there is value in jumping straight to code, but I find real value in a (good) treatment of the model you're coding against before jumping in.

Both tutorials are good, but I think a Python programmer totally new to network programming, which is the audience of the OP, is better served first reading that HOWTO before following the code samples...

Understood.

For me, I just can't learn that way--that's surely where the discrepancy is. I've never been able to, say, read one of those O'Reilly programming books all the way through (though I have bought a couple with the best of intentions). I just have to start playing around. It's probably not the right way, but its served me well. I think this is why the python docs don't work for me--they don't seem suited to that type of learning.