baby-steps beginner programming in python?

[Incompetnce]

I want to learn a programming language and I thought a good way to do that would be to write a program that calculates pi or e. Someone recommended python and it looks pretty good, but a lot of the documentation is pitched a little above my level. My level is a little PHP a little HTML/CSS and some turbo pascal in the distant distant past.

So basically I would like to know if there are any good real baby-steps resources out there for python and what IDE i should use (preferably one available in synaptic (so that's eric, idle or something else like "pida" as far as i could tell)

[mpeters]

A good place for beginners to start is "A Byte of Python" found here: http://swaroopch.info/text/Byte_of_Python:Main_Page

[xtacocorex]

pi is easy to calculate with 4 time the arctangent of 1. That is how I set pi in every program I write.

[pmasiar]

IDLE is simple but decent IDE.

Many links to online books and resources, including training tasks for beginners, are at wiki in my sig

[Incompetnce]

pi is easy to calculate with 4 time the arctangent of 1. That is how I set pi in every program I write.

that's cheating.

also, im trying to decide between IDLE and DrPython. I think i prefer the Dr a little bit...

[mpeters]

that's cheating.

also, im trying to decide between IDLE and DrPython. I think i prefer the Dr a little bit...

Of the two DrPython would get my vote, however in reality I prefer Vim/Gvim

[LaRoza]

My wiki, the first link in my sig, has a lot of resources for learning to program.

Many math functions are all ready defined in many languages, so finding pi or e can be too easy.