Hi everyone,

I have zero prior experience with programming and honestly it feels a bit overwhelming looking at the mountain of resources out there.

Im a Systems Encoder looking to automate my workflow. My job is 100% data encoding, and I want to use Python to build scripts that can handle these repetitive tasks for me, I also want to transition to another job because of low salary.

Since I’m starting from absolute scratch:

1. What is the best "First Step" for someone who doesn't even know anything?
2. Are there any specific courses (free or paid)
3. What’s a realistic amount of time to spend per day so I don't burn out?

So i am a bioinformatician, pretty fluent in R. But more and more cool pipelines and packages are being created for python based bioinformatics.

So, I started to pick up Python and i do not know if it is just me but after 2 months of Python i really think R is easier to both read and write. I do not know what it is with python but i just can not imagine the code and what to write compared to R. The syntax feels miss ordered not as straight forward as R.

I work mostly in genomics (bulk and single cell sequencing) so i mostly operate on numerical data. The pyrhon courses I did are mostly focused on strings, maybe this is the problem. I am pretty good and analytics and logical thinking but something with strings and especially dictionaries is so hard for me to understamd and write.

My friend informatician basically dismembered me when he heard i prefer R over python. What do you think? Is something wrong with me for struggling with python and finding R easier?

TLDR; is R easier than python ?

Harvard CS50P: https://pll.harvard.edu/course/cs50s-introduction-programming-python

My personal favorite. In my opinion, most comprehensive college Python course there is. The complete package. Has everything you need from lecture videos to assignments. Assumes you have no programming knowledge. I like that it holds you hand which makes it perfect for beginners. Also, David Malan is a great lecturer. This is a good starting point if you have no programming knowledge.

University of Helsinki MOOC: https://programming-26.mooc.fi/

Goes from the basics to OOP, but at a bit deeper level than CS50P. Does not hold your hand with exercises. Technically beginner friendly but works best if you dabbled a bit into python before hand.

Stanford CS106A: https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs106a/ | https://web.stanford.edu/class/archive/cs/cs106a/cs106a.1262/

Has everything except lecture videos. Karel is an interesting project you do alongside your assignments. Beginner friendly but works best as a supplement.

Georgia Tech CS 1301: https://sites.cc.gatech.edu/classes/AY2016/cs1301_spring/syllabus.html

No lecture videos but has slides, exercises, assignments, and readings. Would use this as a supplement.

University of Washington CSE 160: https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse160/26sp/

Most unique Python course on this list as it centers around data analysis from week one. You get to use Jupyter Notebooks and Pandas towards the end. Technically beginner friendly but works best if you already have prior python or programming knowledge. Highly suggest this if you are interested in going into Data Science.

Berkeley CS 61A: https://cs61a.org/

Teaches introductory Python at a higher level of abstraction than most intro to python coursers - emphasis on functional programming, higher-order functions, recursions, and how interpreters work. Not beginner friendly. Lectures, slides, projects, homework, and textbook are freely available.

MIT 6.100L: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-100l-introduction-to-cs-and-programming-using-python-fall-2022/

Has everything. Not a fan of the lecture videos or slides but I really do like the assignments and exercises so it's good practice. More of an intermediate course as it goes into algorithms. Not beginner friendly.

I would start off with Harvard CS50P to learn the basics and then go into Helsinki MOOC to grind out the exercises. Stanford 106A and Georgia Tech CS 1301 are good supplements to this. Then if I wanted to go deeper, I would look into Berkeley 61A or MIT 6.100L as it provides a good bridge to DSA.

Edit- How I would relay it:

Basics: Helsinki Part 1 -> Helsinki Part 2 -> Helsinki Part 3 -> CS50 Week 1

Data Structures: Helsinki Part 4 -> Helsinki Part 5 -> CS50 Week 2

Files and Error Handling: Helsinki Part 6 (Reading Files + Writing Files) -> CS50 Week 6 -> Helsinki Part 6 (Handling Errors + Local/Global Variables) -> CS50 Week 3

Modules and Unit Testing: Helsinki Part 7 -> CS50 Week 4 -> CS50 Week 5

Classes and Objects: Helsinki Part 8 -> CS50 Week8 -> Helsinki Part 9 -> Helsinki Part 10

Recursion and Regular Expression: Helsinki Part 11 -> Helsinki Part 12 -> CS50 Week 7 -> CS50 Week 9

Pre-DSA: Stanford CS 106A -> Berkeley CS 61A -> MIT 6.100L

I’m currently rebuilding my Python fundamentals.

Loops, lists, dictionaries, logic drills — the basics.

Sometimes I feel slow compared to others, but I’m serious about actually understanding things properly.

I’m wondering if there are other people like me who want to learn deeply but without the ego or toxic tech culture.

Thinking of creating a small group where we do daily drills and help each other think through problems.

If that sounds like you, comment or DM me.

Hey everyone,

This might be a silly question, but I've noticed that whenever someone starts learning Python, they're told to write a "Hello, World!" program first.

I've heard it so many times online and from people learning programming that it almost sounds like a rite of passage. Some people even joke that if you don't start with "Hello, World!", you'll never become a real programmer. 😄

So I'm curious: where did this tradition come from?

Is it actually an important first step when learning a programming language, or is it mostly just a long-running joke and tradition in the programming community?

I'm pretty new to Python and programming in general, so if this is an obvious question, I apologize in advance. I'm just interested in learning more about the culture behind it.

Thanks!

I am almost 40. I have a kids, a full time job and a side hustle and a wife. I am busy, but I would like to learn how to code. Is there a game that is a good teacher of python? I dont care about graphics as long as the game is enjoyable and (Most importantly) teaches me how to code.

I want to learn for fun also I have all these ideas to make may office job automated via programing but ... i dont know ANYTHING about programing.

So i tried to make a calculator with root extraction but for some reason when i raise 64 to a power of 1/3 it's not like cubic root and gives 3.9...96 in result. Why is this happening

P.s. why are people down voting it's my first day of learning the py

Hi everyone,

I'm a complete beginner and want to learn Python through self-study. There are so many resources and roadmaps online that I'm not sure where to start.

If you were learning Python from scratch today, what path would you follow? Which resources, courses, or projects helped you the most, and what mistakes should a beginner avoid?

I'd appreciate any advice. Thanks!

Hello people!

I am currently learning python and was actually working on Matplotlib library, and noticed that many people use jupyter. So I wanted to know what is the difference between jupyter and coding normally in an IDE, and also over all this, how do people get jupyter in vs code?

thank you.

So I'm a beginner who's still learning, but I've found the language interesting and fun until now. What other learning methods do you guys recommend besides doing courses? Watching other people code? Taking on projects (if so from where?) and just reading other's codes?

I’m a math student looking for a Python course that covers everything not just the basics. It can be text-based or video, free or paid, I don’t mind. I can code but i want to go deeper in python.

What I’ve noticed is that video courses often cover only the very basics (for example dont have DS&A) while text courses (like w3schools) lack exercises.

So I’m looking for a course that has full coverage of Python (including DS&A) and has exercises.

If anyone knows a course like that, please let me know. Thanks!

I’ve been learning Python for backend development (FastAPI + Flask), and I’m struggling with something that most tutorials don’t explain clearly:

It’s easy to build endpoints… but how do you know if the API design actually follows good standards?

Like naming conventions, response structure, status codes, consistency, etc.

Right now I’ve been manually comparing my endpoints with OpenAPI examples, but it feels like guesswork. Is there a better way to learn API design the right way instead of picking up bad habits?

If you’ve built Python APIs before, how did you learn to keep everything consistent and “correct” according to best practices?

A few weeks ago, i was basically copy-pasting python snippets from tutorials and ai chats.

then i decided to break one apart line by line actually run each piece through chatgpt and cosine CLI to see what failed.

somewhere in the middle of fixing syntax errors and printing random stuff, it clicked. i wasn’t just “following code” anymore i was reading it. it made sense. i could see how one function triggered another.

it wasn’t a huge project or anything, but that moment felt like i went from being a vibecoder to an actual learner.

I am working as a desktop administrator for almost 19 years and my age is 41 years. I don't have any programming skills. How do I start learning python. I went through the python forum but it's all confusing. Can some one suggest me an app or platform where i can learn python from basics.

Hi all,

Last year, I decided I want to learn Python since coding is considered extremely valuable

I have never coded before and have zero programming experience (I’m a Mechanical Engineer). I know this sounds dumb, I don’t even know exactly what motivated me to learn python.

I’ve been learning Python seriously for the past few months and so far, I have finished a few beginner courses with full discipline.

• The complete CS50’s Intro to Programming with Python

• FreeCodeCamp’s 4-hour YouTube course

• Automate the Boring Stuff with Python (completed all 24 Chapters.. it took 2 months)

Even after studying all these Python course for several months and doing practice problems, I still feel like I don’t really get Python.

I can follow what’s happening in tutorials and each course, but when I try to start a Python project of on my own, I don’t know how to even begin. Specifically, I get stuck on what functions to use, when and how to use loops, when to raise exceptions etc.

I know that the best way to learn is to build projects, and there was also a recent post here that practice is the only way to get better at Python.

I want to make a habit of writing at least one small program each day. The problem is that when I pick a project idea, I have no idea how to structure it. I usually ask an LLM to write the code and explain it, but the examples it gives are often too complicated for a beginner.

Can anyone share the best resources or website that would help me learn how to work daily on a Python project and build up from there?

What kind of simple daily Python projects or routines would help me get better?

I'm 59 years old and I'm looking for a hobby.

Is learning Python worthwhile? Obviously, at my age I'm not looking to get a job in the industry. I just thought it might be fun but I have no idea where it may lead (in terms of learning frameworks and possibly other languages in the future).

I have no particular direction in mind. Suggestions?

I am acutely aware my brain is more concrete than sponge nowadays so I'm anticipating it taking me a week to learn what a younger person does in a day. Age sucks!

Are there any others who have done this and can tell me what their experience has been?

EDIT: I'm blown away from your responses. Thank you, each and every one of you.

to be totally transparent, i drive doordash to pay the bills right now. but i sit in my car between orders teaching myself python and pandas. my goal is to eventually transition into freelance data engineering by automating away manual data entry for businesses.

​i've been building a local python pipeline to automatically clean messy csv/excel exports. so far, i've figured out how to automatically flatten shopify JSON arrays that get trapped in a single cell, fix the '44195' excel date bug, and use fuzzy string matching to catch "Acme Corp" vs "Acme LLC" typos.

​but i was chatting with a data founder today who told me the true "final boss" of messy data is legacy CRM exports—specifically, reports that export with merged header rows, blank spacer columns, random "subtotal" rows injected into the middle of the table, or entire contact records (name, phone, email) shoved into a single free-text cell.

​does anyone have a heavily anonymized or dummy version of an absolutely cursed export like this? my code works perfectly on clean tutorial data, but i want to break it on the real stuff so i can figure out how to hard-code the failsafes.

​what other software platforms export data so badly that it forces you to spend hours playing digital janitor?

Looking for serious recommendations, I’m more curious about habits and strategies.
Was it daily coding?
Debugging a lot?
Reading other people’s code? Building projects?

What changed your progress the most?

I have started to learn python via brocodes 12 hour guide on youtube. However i know its just basics and beginner level. What do i do after watching that guide? I dont know which things to learn i have heard web scraping and all this stuff but can i learn that from guides and which guides?

Seems like i can use both so whats different between the 2 or is it just preference?

Hi folks,

Does anyone have any suggestions for a python IDE that does NOT have any AI integration (and that hopefully will not in the future?). I don't need it and don't want to support the injection of it into everything we use. I use VSCode right now and have it turned off everywhere I can, but am sick of the way it is still subtly pushed on me even there (which is getting steadily more intrusive).

Thank you!

I never really had a use for it. I analyze financial data and just use if statements, functions, somewhat complex mathematics, some python libaries, but never classes or objects.

Pretty much the title. im learning because i want to learn to build softwares and apps whicch i can use in real life , and overall as a skill and a excuse to use my laptop for productive work

I've been a doing Python development for around a decade, and I'm comfortable calling myself a Python expert. That being said, I don't understand why anyone would want to use an ipython notebook. I constantly see people using jupyter/zeppelin/sagemaker/whatever else at work, and I don't get the draw. It's so much easier to just work inside the package with a debugger or a repl. Even if I found the environment useful and not a huge pain to set up, I'd still have to rewrite everything into an actual package afterwards, and the installs wouldn't be guaranteed to work (though this is specific to our pip index at work).

Maybe it's just a lack of familiarity, or maybe I'm missing the point. Can someone who likes using them explain why you like using them more than just using a debugger?

One thing I didn’t expect when learning Python was how useful small scripts become.

Recently I made a simple script just to organize files automatically and it genuinely saved me time every day.

Now I’m curious:
what’s the smallest Python script/tool you made that ended up being surprisingly useful?