Using the Python documentation
Using the Python documentation
For beginners and experts alike, a language’s documentation is an essential resource. Accordingly, it’s important that you know how to find and consult Python’s online documentation.
There are many resources available on the internet and the quality of these resources varies from truly awful to superb. The online Python documentation falls toward the good end of that spectrum.
Pros
- Definitive and up-to-date
- Documentation for different versions clearly specified
- Thorough and accurate
- Includes references for all standard libraries
- Available in multiple languages
- Includes a comprehensive tutorial for Python beginners
- Coding examples (where given) conform to good Python style (PEP 8)
Cons
- Can be lengthy or technical—not always ideal for beginners
- Don’t always appear at top of search engine results.
python.org
Official Python documentation, tutorials, and other resources are hosted at https://python.org.
- Documentation: https://docs.python.org/3/
- Tutorial: https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/
- Beginner’s Guide: https://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide
I recommend these as the first place to check for online resources.
There’s a lot of incorrect, dated, or otherwise questionable code on the internet. Be careful when consulting sources other than official documentation.
Original author: Clayton Cafiero < [given name] DOT [surname] AT uvm DOT edu >
No generative AI was used in producing this material. This was written the old-fashioned way.
This material is for free use under either the GNU Free Documentation License or the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License (take your pick).