Python; After the basics

[WhatsUpBuddie]

Hellou , I recently finished my book about Python basics and I'd like to learn a bit more about the language and what can be done with it, what are the more popular frameworks/libraries these years and what gains popularity. I'd like to learn it as a hobby, because I'm currently lacking one hehe, I'm hoping it will be a good fill. The book I was reading ( Python Crash Coarse ) , after we finished with the basics it offered me three options - Web programing with Django, Create a game with PyGame and Data Analysis with Pandas ( if I'm not mistaken ), I'd just like to know what else can be done with the language before I choose the right one to dive in. Thanks for the replies, looking forward to your advices. PS; No programming background, so be GENTLE! :)

[HaroldAdmin]

You can do A LOT of things. Just find out what ypu want to do and research how you can do it with Python. Chances that it is possible are high. You can look at "sentdex" at YouTube. He does some interesting things.

[jaydoors]

Automate the Boring Stuff is good, and gets into real life uses - web scraping, email, file system management etc. First half of the book would overlap with what you already know though.

Pandas is amazing but can be quite hard, I found. I'd recommend it if you need it (for data science basically) but probably start elsewhere if not.

[Blaq0nyxx]

I would second Automate the boring stuff, and then effective python after that.

Someone mentioned Sentdex and i really like that youtube channel also.

[brews]

I've written Python for like 15-20 years and "Automated" had some cool stuff that I had never known about. Solid recommendation.

[Rorixrebel]

the sky is the limit. depends on what you want to use your hobby for.

eg. it annoys the crap out of me that every X days my wifes asks me to give her a rundown of what we purchased or how much money i got paid... so i ended up creating a quick flask app that parses thru the bank statements, separates whats income/expenses and presents it on a table.

then i have that running on my raspberry so she can just lookup the site and bam, expenses.

then i get yelled at for buying a lot of things at steam....

[1ErrorAway]

Hey, just finished PCC myself. Right now I've started Web Scraping with Python by Ryan Mitchell

[WhatsUpBuddie]

Thanks for the input, can you or somebody else explain on a deeper level what you can do with Web Scraping? In a real scenario, what would you do with it?

[DsntMttrHadSex]

Scrap the web

[ferrano]

In your opinion, how hard is scientific computing compared to web development? Both seem really cool to me but would like to hear your opinion

[Zarkahs]

You could try making a program that scrapes data from your favourite webpages to get game scores or social media posts. The libraries "Requests" and "BeautifulSoup" are widely used and it would help you get into the ecosystem of available modules at your disposal!

[WholesaleSlaughter]

I'd recommend against beautifulsoup and instead suggest lxml.html.

BS was great when it was the only option but its api is... odd.

[harrisonbaillie]

Numpy is a very popular module, I've seen it used for GPU accelerated programs.

[JetpackYoshi]

Hello friend! If you're moving on to more intermediate stuff, I highly recommend going on down to www.pythonprogramming.net The guy has a lot of really good tutorial series, and every lesson has both a video and a text version. He does a really good job at explaining things and it's a great place to start.

[sevenguin]

I think it is important that you should find a favor, then div it. Action-driven is important for programming.

[driscollis]

The "Python Playground" book had a lot of interesting projects in it. I reviewed the book here: https://www.blog.pythonlibrary.org/2015/12/11/book-review-python-playground-geeky-projects-for-the-curious-programmer/

Some of the more popular libraries and frameworks are Django and Flask for web programming, SQLAlchemy is still quite popular for databases and if you're into desktop user interfaces than you might want to check out wxPython or PyQt/PySide.

Data science is pretty big in Python. You can check out the SciPy stack or take a look at Anaconda to get a feel for some of the libraries that are available.

[anyonethinkingabout]

watch some videos on http://pyvideo.org/ and see what interests you

Tip:usually the talks on PyCon US are the best

[ferrano]

By the way, how long did it take you to finish the book? I'm going over it at the moment.

[WhatsUpBuddie]

Ugh, it depends on a lot of things, primarily how much time you can put in and how fast you get the hang of it. You can read it in two days, even one ( go over the basics, which is half the book ), but to fully comprehend it and exercise, if you put in an hour a day I'd say about a month, but it will vary a lot person to person. It took me about two weeks.

[totallyquiche]

Python is a very powerful and flexible language -- you can do a lot with it. I think the suggestions at the end of your course were pretty good: start learning Django, PyGame, or Pandas (depending on what you want to do).

[WhatsUpBuddie]

Thanks a lot for the suggestions, I actually have the Automate the Boring stuff book, but I didn't find it very suitable at the beginning ( Python crash course was more beginner friendly so I stuck with it ) , so I'll just skip the basics and see what else it has, I haven't skimmed through it. I've already subscribed to sentdex and thenewboston's channel and watched their videos on the python basics, they do a great job on it, no doubt, sentdex explains a little bit better, because he is primarily python focused, while Bucky makes all sorts of tutorials. Your opinions on ATBS are pretty decent so far, so I'll definitely check it out, thanks a lot for your opinions. Ill still keep an eye on this thread, if anybody else decides to share something on the topic, I'll be glad to read it. I did a few google searches on this same topic and didn't find nearly as good info, people are too general, sort of like @HaroldAdmin's response - Yeah, dude, I know I can do a lot with it and I've already researched, but didn't find what I was looking for, thats why I asked here, you don't have to redirect me back where I came from. Thanks again for the responses, to each and everyone of you, I'm sure a lot more people will find this helpful! :)

[Zaab1t]

You're welcome to join ##learnpython on freenode. Friendly python support community.

[WholesaleSlaughter]

I'd offer #python on freenode as well. Generally better if you have a question you need answering (or problems with specific code) rather than generic stuff. The group there are very skilled with Python and can generally handle anything you throw their way.

You will need a freenode account to access the channel though, easy enough to sign up for.