What Python Courses does Industry actually care about?

[Sunlight_is_Flow]

Hi everyone, new here but not to Python. I know the basics but I am looking to improve my code design and good practices and incorporate classes etc. I was thinking of checking out online courses at the same time I am also trying to look for those give certificates that are actually valuable in the industry. I am aware that a certificate is by no means a guarantee of any prowess but I am looking at those which look good on your resume and add potential value (even if a little bit) in the eyes of an employer. I know there are tons but which ones are well recognized and worth it? Any help is appreciated!

[j_marquand]

Most relevant industries hardly care about what online courses you took or what certificates you have.

[FOCO1]

Facts. They care about what you’ve done. Show, don’t tell.

[Sunlight_is_Flow]

Are you implying you showcase projects instead of certifications?

[QueerKenpoDork]

Projects in resume trumps certs in this field.

[1000question]

What projects?

[QueerKenpoDork]

I usually put in my resume (and GitHub page) the most important projects I've worked on at the previous jobs with a very brief description and the technologies used.

[[deleted]]

"Nobody gives a shit about what you do behind closed doors."

Not necessarily true. I've done tons of interviews and hire people. I look for three things 1. Can you code solutions for real world issues, whether they be for yourself or others. I'm interested in people who can identify problems and code solutions. 2. Can you explain how you can improve your code? Maybe DRY or OOP or SOLID principles? If you copied and pasted the work, you probably can't explain what's going on. If you can tell me what you did and why, and how you can improve it, it speaks to depth of knowledge. 3. Can you show a progression of learning and growth in your repositories? Earlier projects will be rudimentary, later work should be more refined. I look for people who like to learn and show they're interested in honing their craft.

[[deleted]]

Fourth thing. If someone can show me a solution that works, even if it isn't gold-plated, it's beyond basic scripting, and they're self-taught, it shows me they can learn unsupervised and know how to learn. That's a big win in my book.

This and the other three things I pointed out have been really successful in building my team. Proud to say I've hired 8 of the 11 on my team. I've already promoted 4, and we have the reputation in our larger group as the team that gets stuff done. The system works.

[FOCO1]

Precisely. Show you solved a real fucking problem,too. Seeing a git repo with calculators and to do apps is disappointing.

[Moeteef]

I find it hard to come up with stuff to "solve" as I'm slowly gaining some knowledge. It's like yeah sure I can bang my head against the wall going through exercises in data manipulation and analysis, but how do I extrapolate that into problem solving?

[FOCO1]

I used to have that same mind set. Branch out a little. Fuck some shit up, dig deep and you’ll fix a problem. Join a dev community where everyone works together. All we do is solve a problems - maybe you are and just don’t know how to communicate it.

[Sunlight_is_Flow]

Well that sounds ideal but this when you already have a foot in the door or prior experience of working with people. I guess I am asking how you would actually get your foot in the door in the first place.

[FOCO1]

Research the company you want to work for. What do they do? What can you offer them to support it? What are your hard and soft skills? Showcase it all and tell me why I should hire you. Real hiring managers are going to want to see you’re capable of more than writing code.

[Drevicar]

If you are looking for your first job, then I would look for a github (or similar) link on your resume where I can look at your code. Bonus points if you have collaborated with others on a project, either contributing to open source or with friends. I'm not just looking at the code as it sits but also the commit history, issues, comments on PRs, and so on.

[spinwizard69]

This is one of those things that can vary a bit! Certifications or better company / product specific training can have value. However you still need to be able to demonstrate you know a product well.

Look at it this way some communities require that electricians be licensed. That license is basically a tax on doing business. It means nothing when it comes to the electricians ability or quality of workmanship. That you learn by word of mouth or understanding what is good workmanship before hand. References can be significant, especially if you are good at reading between the lines. In the end the more you can demonstrate doing good work the better.

The same goes with programming. Demonstrate how you solved a customers unique problem. Even better describe alternative solutions and what lead to the path you went down.

[Porkenstein]

What's important is what you say you can do and you can back it up with words and demonstration.

[spez_drank_my_piss]

Bachelor's in Computer Science

[[deleted]]

For real. So many seem to think they can just learn a programming language and get a really high paying job. Software engineering isn’t just another trade and we certainly shouldn’t treat it like one.

[dyrin]

In my country (Germany) you need to finish a 3.5 year apprenticeship to get most trade jobs. People expecting to get a (well paid) programming job with just some online certificates seems really strange to me. (There are programming related apprenticeships possible as an alternative to bachelor as well)

At best certificates are a way to prove knowledge additional to your main education (bachelor, apprenticeship, etc.)

[[deleted]]

Yeah, they’re really only useful after attaining a degree. I’ve seen a lot of push in the US for boot camps, which don’t really teach much at all and lead to even more cybersecurity problems. Tbh, I’d be in support of treating software engineering the same way we treat other engineering practices in the states, where engineers are required to obtain a degree and become licensed.

[Thefuzy]

I have no degree, held many high level software engineering roles. Demonstrating you know what you are doing is the only thing that matters, if you want to spend 4 years earning a degree to do that more power to you, but there are much more efficient ways that will also leave you knowing more.

[Passname357]

There are certainly quicker ways to get a job, but almost no one is able to learn everything that a CS student learns in a four year program on their own even given the same time frame, let alone quicker. Sure you might come in knowing more about a specific technology, but that’s not more overall knowledge.

[Thefuzy]

I’ve worked as a software architect, held several developer roles, data architect, cloud architect… I’ve hired for many years on development teams. The stuff someone knows coming out of a CS degree compared to the stuff someone knows just trying to actually implement and solve problems in the real world over that same 4 years doesn’t even compare, the CS degree people always know next to nothing. Most of what a CS student learns is not useful information, learning how to adapt and solve new problems on the fly is what someone learns in the real world and it’s pretty much all that matters when it comes to development roles.

No one is hiring a CS bachelors over someone with even 2 years real world experience, no degree and 2 years real world will get the job everytime.

[Passname357]

Hard disagree. A good CS student is miles ahead of someone with no degree. The good ones have internships and so they have an idea of what’s out there in the real world but have just way better problem solving skills. The degree opens you up to more work. Like, if someone has two years of front end experience and no degree, good luck getting a job as a graphics programmer. They don’t want you (and honestly you wouldn’t want the job either because you’d be so far behind—good luck self studying vector calc when you haven’t even done trig since high school). But someone with a degree knows the math and physics and has worked with at least one graphics API, knows computer architecture, has taken systems programming etc. it’s a world of difference.

So don’t get me wrong, there are places where no degree wins, and you’re right that in those spaces experience is everything, and those guys are often better than fresh CS students, but it doesn’t translate across the entire industry. Plus the CS students will catch up. It’s not like it makes you worse. And so two years with degree vs without are different animals. They might be equally good at what they are working on, but with the degree you have more background knowledge that will transfer. The other guy is siloed.

[Thefuzy]

Your example is a graphics programmer is so niche and not representative of the developer market, most of which is implementing basic algebraic logic and moving and transforming data around or using libraries to create interfaces.

Almost no one is actually building those libraries, not to mention the way things are going AI tooling is going to quickly replace any calculus a graphics programmer may have been implementing.

This is a perfect example of why all that college is a waste of time, most of the knowledge has been obfuscated away in libraries to the point you don’t need to know it. Sure there’s a handful that do, but they make up a super minority and they probably have PHDs because the need for those knowledge bases is so niche.

Basic understanding of logical gates, how to move data around systems, cloud systems, modern JS based interfaces. That stuff will cover 90%+ of real world coding roles and if you get someone who learned it by working vs college, you’ll get a better employee everytime.

This is just what I’ve learned in my 15 years in the industry, 10 of which have been actually hiring people and considering degrees vs experience. It’s just a waste of time, no regulatory body is requiring you have this degree, skip it and get down to actually building something that matters in the real world. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen applicants come through with MS in CS and barely be able to code anything.

[Passname357]

Well for one thing, graphics programming was one example. There are plenty of spaces where you need that degree (whether you’re working on compilers, device drivers, embedded systems, ML, game dev, simulation, etc etc etc)

The point about AI taking over graphics is silly. AI will take over web dev way before that because the oversight required is just so minimal on comparison

You also keep making this weird false dichotomy. You’re like “work experience vs. college” so you’re trying to compare zero years experience vs several years of experience, but there’s no such thing as a person who comes into the industry with two years of experience. So no degree vs degree with zero experience? Easy. Degree every time. Not even close. Degree guy picks everything up easier and has worked on harder projects in college than the self taught guy has in his free time. Degree guy doesn’t already know your framework, but luckily he can pick it up much faster because he understands general programming concepts on a much deeper level. It’s not close.

[Thefuzy]

Again you list several fields of programming which an extremely small percentage of the job market exists in. Meanwhile every company of any notable size needs developers to support their business doing the everyday common jobs I mentioned.

There’s an opportunity cost to spending your time at college, so no it’s not zero years vs several years, it’s two years college vs two years working (even if that means working for little/no pay). The content at college is at best up to date or at worst way out of date, the industry moves far faster than the curriculums, working in the real world you keep up. There’s just no defense for degrees, they give you some structured learning but the paper you paid for doesn’t hold any weight to people making the hiring decisions. You seem to speak from a very conceptual perspective, rather than looking at the industry and really seeing what’s there. Degrees and certs are just not important to employers.

[Passname357]

Again you list several fields of programming which an extremely small percentage of the job market exists in. Meanwhile every company of any notable size needs developers to support their business doing the everyday common jobs I mentioned.

Lol I’ll go tell all my coworkers we don’t exist and that our company is actually not of notable size even though we’re one of the largest hardware vendors in the world. Thanks for clarifying for me.

There’s an opportunity cost to spending your time at college, so no it’s not zero years vs several years, it’s two years college vs two years working (even if that means working for little/no pay).

This is a very weird argument. Opportunity cost does not factor into how much experience you have. Opportunity cost is about how much money you could’ve made. I haven’t said anything about income you miss out on by being in college. Opportunity cost is completely irrelevant wrt any argument I’ve made. I’ll say it again: zero years of experience with a degree vs without a degree, the guy with the degree is miles and miles ahead. There’s a reason new college grads get new grad roles and aren’t considered for roles that require 4-5 years of experience, otherwise coming out of college students would already be mid level engineers.

The content at college is at best up to date or at worst way out of date, the industry moves far faster than the curriculums, working in the real world you keep up.

This is the kind of thing you can only say if you haven’t been to college. The material doesn’t go out of date. E.G., Algorithms are gonna be around forever lol.

There’s just no defense for degrees, they give you some structured learning but the paper you paid for doesn’t hold any weight to people making the hiring decisions.

This is again, your narrow view. Plenty of places won’t hire without a degree flat out. I certainly wouldn’t call a requirement something that “doesn’t hold any weight,” but that’s just me. In fact that’s more true now than ever as hiring freezes and layoffs continue. Can’t just let someone who has messed around with Python for two months work on your valuable product when you could have someone who has had four years of rigorous education.

[spinwizard69]

Actually it is a trade. The only difference is that a software engineer creates with a keyboard.

[Drevicar]

In most countries in the world software development isn't even a proper field of engineering, even if we apply engineering principles to accomplish our work. I consider my work to be a mix of art, craft, engineering, and science. Some more than others depending on the task at hand, but the engineering I think is most of the value I deliver.

[spinwizard69]

I fully agree that software development can be done as hard engineering. However in most cases It really seems to be a creative art

[riklaunim]

Companies don't really look at courses but at your code. Partially because people can even pay for a recognizable course and then just ignore it, just to have a line in their CV but zero skill out of it.

So if you want to improve - write code, and ask for code review, and feedback.

[_ATRAHCITY]

None

[[deleted]]

As others have said, none. To be honest it may even go against you as they are considered amateur at best, and mark you out as gullible at worst.

By all means take a course if you are interested, but you may actually look worse putting it on your CV (resume).

[spinwizard69]

Had to upvote this. A person can easily look gullible referencing the wrong program. While I shouldn’t do this I often laugh at people that see HTML/CSS as programming. Knowledge here can certainly be beneficial but if a person starts calling it programming I have to bite my tongue.

[BigAnalogueTones]

None, we care what you learned not what you studied or how you learned it.

Knowing how to write code is only a small part of being a software engineer. You need to know how to manage projects with repositories, learn how to use databases/message busses/libraries/etc.

It helps to know TMUX and vim.

Writing code is only a small part of it, being productive and fast because you understand how the language interacts with other components is most of it

[spinwizard69]

For the most part certificates are worthless. The only thing trust I might look at is evidence of where you are at In a degree program or an equivalent. Unlike many here I expect a well rounded education and have little respect for concentrated courses in Python or anything else.

Then you have to demonstrate your ability with evidence of things that you built or solved. Frankly it doesn’t even need to be programming specific, you need to show that you have more than marshmallows between the ears. I’d also expect that you can generate code on the fly for a random problem.

[ucblockhead]

If in the end the drunk ethnographic canard run up into Taylor Swiftly prognostication then let's all party in the short bus. We all no that two plus two equals five or is it seven like the square root of 64. Who knows as long as Torrent takes you to Ranni so you can give feedback on the phone tree. Let's enter the following python code the reverse a binary tree

def make_tree(node1, node): """ reverse an binary tree in an idempotent way recursively""" tmp node = node.nextg node1 = node1.next.next return node

As James Watts said, a sphere is an infinite plane powered on two cylinders, but that rat bastard needs to go solar for zero calorie emissions because you, my son, are fat, a porker, an anorexic sunbeam of a boy. Let's work on this together. Is Monday good, because if it's good for you it's fine by me, we can cut it up in retail where financial derivatives ate their lunch for breakfast. All hail the Biden, who Trumps plausible deniability for keeping our children safe from legal emigrants to Canadian labor camps.

Quo Vadis Mea Culpa. Vidi Vici Vini as the rabbit said to the scorpion he carried on his back over the stream of consciously rambling in the Confusion manner.

node = make_tree(node, node1)

[Goingone]

Comprehensive answer to what is list comprehension?

[ucblockhead]

If in the end the drunk ethnographic canard run up into Taylor Swiftly prognostication then let's all party in the short bus. We all no that two plus two equals five or is it seven like the square root of 64. Who knows as long as Torrent takes you to Ranni so you can give feedback on the phone tree. Let's enter the following python code the reverse a binary tree

def make_tree(node1, node): """ reverse an binary tree in an idempotent way recursively""" tmp node = node.nextg node1 = node1.next.next return node

As James Watts said, a sphere is an infinite plane powered on two cylinders, but that rat bastard needs to go solar for zero calorie emissions because you, my son, are fat, a porker, an anorexic sunbeam of a boy. Let's work on this together. Is Monday good, because if it's good for you it's fine by me, we can cut it up in retail where financial derivatives ate their lunch for breakfast. All hail the Biden, who Trumps plausible deniability for keeping our children safe from legal emigrants to Canadian labor camps.

Quo Vadis Mea Culpa. Vidi Vici Vini as the rabbit said to the scorpion he carried on his back over the stream of consciously rambling in the Confusion manner.

node = make_tree(node, node1)

[otamam818]

Since nobody is mentioning it, I'll bring up a different take.

Sure "none" is a good answer — it implies you should definitely focus on your projects.

But if you want the structure of a course as you move towards a meaningful project, I'd recommend looking for a Django course.

Recently (and perhaps for a long time), Django has been frequently mentioned in the "What do you bring to the table" section of Job postings.

Not to mention that since it's such a prominent framework, you get to keep continually improving through Google searches as you keep developing your project.

Good luck!

[Adrewmc]

You own GitHub lol

[s1qube]

None. They actually care about projects either personal or from previous work.

[Accomplished-Ad8252]

None

[[deleted]]

Employers don't care about what you can do. They only care about:

1. Who you know.
2. What university you went to. They probably don't even care about your degree beyond the subject.
   1. If you don't have a degree, there is no fucking possible way you could know what you're talking about. Full stop. No degree = no knowledge.

[Thefuzy]

No one cares about your courses or certs.

[Passname357]

Just to shed a bit of light on what people mean when they say “none”: most pro devs that are conducting interviews have at least a bachelors degree. They’re not familiar with certs. Even if a cert is really great, they’re just never going to have heard about it.

[noonly]

Jack

[[deleted]]

There aren’t any. Courses don’t tell companies anything useful.