If you're already a programmer, it's not for you. If you're not already a programmer, no, absolutely it is not a joke. Having taught people to program for many years it's some of the best advice I've seen.

Did you read the whole intro?

> Sometimes people who already know a programming language will read this book and feel I'm insulting them.

I saw that part. Still triggered my "maybe and elaborate troll" detector. He doesn't explain why he's doing it this way.

You are triggering my "maybe an elaborate troll" detector.

Especially as the GP has already referred to the intro, which you have supposedly already read.

So let me point it out for you again: http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/intro.html

He goes into great detail arguing why he thinks this is one of the best ways to learn something completely new quickly and efficiently.

The first lesson literally consists of "run python interpreter, then quit".

How is this a useful way to approach things? He compares it to learning to play guitar - if my first guitar lesson consisted of "Open your guitar case. Take out the guitar. Put it back.", I'd ask for my money back!

I tried teaching my little brother to program using the Ruby version of this book. The lessons were really basic but he still struggled.

If the first lesson in an introductory guitar book was how to properly handle a guitar, I would not be surprised at all. In fact, I know from experience with other instruments that that would be entirely normal.

Everybody goes through a stage where they have no idea what anything on their computer screen means. Some of them have the luxury of having a mentor walk them through and teach them the ontology of "the computer". Similarly one needs to learn the ontology of "computer programming".

And this tutorial is not meant for snotty CS program graduates, which again is explained in the introduction, which you to this time refuse to read and understand.

If you have a teacher worth his salt, he will have you open the guitar case and teach you about what the instrument is, what its parts are, how you are supposed to handle it and take care of it. At least that is what my trumpet teacher taught me when I started out.

Why you think it is a joke?

If you have a programming background, the official docs are the best way to pick up Python.

This is for beginners, and it helped me a lot when I was starting out. It's not perfect, but it's a great way to get started.

I don't know. Is this a content-less accusation?

> is this a joke?

No, just written by Zed Shaw. Honest mistake though.

Be advised that this kind of plugging and low grade humor is frowned upon on this site. Go read the https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html if you haven't yet.