The notes are self-contained but fairly terse, and are intended for someone versed in other programming languages to quickly learn the syntax, style and peculiarities of Python. Hence, given some programming background, they can be followed without using the book.
The notes only attempt a basic introduction to Python and are not comprehensive. After completing them you should be comfortable programming basic capabililties in Python. Once you are at that level, it is fairly simple to learn new features through a web or Stack Overflow search.
If, on the other hand, you are new to programming, then these notes may be too terse, and it would be preferable to follow the book.
This Python introduction teaches by example. To learn Python with these notes, it is best try all the examples yourself. Don't cut and paste the commands -- there is very little benefit to that. Instead, type them in to the Python command line yourself. This act of typing is integral to learning how to program, as the best way to learn programming concepts is to use them after you see them. Also, a number of the chapters have exercises at the end of the chapter. Do these in an interative Python terminal or using a debugger to practice the concepts from the chapter and to learn some new tricks.
Python is available on many operating systems (OSes), although here the how-to-install descriptions will assume you are working in Windows. However, it should be straightforward to perform the same tasks on Linux, MacOS and other OSes.
The book that inspired these notes "Python Basics: A Practical Introduction to Python 3" by David Atmos et al., uses the Integrated Developer Environment (IDE) that comes with Python called IDLE. These notes, on the other hand, use Visual Studio Code (VSCode). VSCode is free, open-source, cross-platform, light-weight while at the same time being extremely powerful, and surprisingly easy to use. It provides powerful editing and debugging functions for Python. It also has extensions for many other applications. For instance, I am writing these notes in VSCode using Markdown and Jupyter Notebooks. If you wish, you can read these notes and run code samples all within VSCode.
Besides these notes, there are many online resources on Python including the following:
- A great one-page introduction to Python: https://realpython.com/python-first-steps/
- A fine online tutorial that is a good alternative to these notes: https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/index.html
- The basics of Python here: https://www.learnpython.org/
- Microsoft/VSCode YouTube series introduces Python: https://youtu.be/jFCNu1-Xdsw
- Exhaustive Python documentation and downloads: https://www.python.org/
- Search with the [python] or [opencv] tags in the search bar: https://stackoverflow.com
- OpenCV Python Tutorials: https://opencv-python-tutroals.readthedocs.io/en/latest/py_tutorials/py_setup/py_intro/py_intro.html
- Python PEP 8 Style Guide for learning Python conventions: https://peps.python.org/pep-0008/
Choose the method that works best for you.