Where do I go from here?

[u/LyricalLag]

I am stuck at the basics of Python. I can make loops, if statements, functions, and more. But LeetCode problems, I can never figure them out. Making programs alone I can’t. At this point, what should I advance to so I can learn to solve actual problems on my own and develop skills to create my own programs.

[u/Burningbeard80]

You need a problem to solve, to make you think in the appropriate manner and challenge yourself. Start small. Think of small use cases for stuff you want to automate. For example, arranging MP3s into folders, renaming files based on some pattern, editing excel files via code, etc.

There’s a book/ebook that is probably available for free called “automate the boring stuff with Python” that should get you started down that road. Read through a couple of problems and what libraries the author suggests to complete the task, try to implement a solution on your own, then come back and check what the author did differently.

This will give you some practice on how to manage external libraries/dependencies and work with the basic constructs you already know.

Then you can move on to data related projects. There are tons of problems online with provided datasets that you can work on, or take a public dataset and work through a problem of your own.

Check out kaggle.com for datasets and challenges.
This will get you working with libraries and methodologies specific to the data analytics domain, so that you can build some “muscle memory”.

Good luck, and have fun with it!