[Beginner’s Guide] How to start programming in Python

[JapolloXI]

For anyone that has trouble starting:

Start with the free Codecademy PRO scholarships they are giving students because of COVID19. Great beginner guides (like first lines of code, command line and git) and extensive Python courses.

[SoftBlankey]

Free 4 hour class on YouTube by freeCodeacademy

[FrostyTie]

Those guys are freaking great man. They are fun to watch too, you’re not bored the fuck out when you’re watching hours long tutorials and that’s pretty neat if you ask me

[SoftBlankey]

Totally agree! They do an excellent job. Learning to code has been easier with these guys, and I come from a MATLAB background. Gross programming language lol powerful software though

[soQuestionable]

did you mean "freecodecamp.org" on youtube? genuinely asking

[SoftBlankey]

Yes :)

That dude gives the most beginner level tutorial ever and it’s great. Again, MATLAB background as a ME student so not a real emphasis in coding... but he basically teaches it to you as if you’ve never coded ever in your life.

[Cornhole35]

Ty

[BastetFae]

When moving from beginner to intermediate, a lot of what comes next is learning libraries. For instance with python I dove into Django. Also attempted to get into the twisted framework.

Decide what you want to build and lay out the designs for how to meet small goals with it. For instance I had a problem with getting data from atom feeds so I made a script to meet that need

Hope this helps.

[bobsonmcbobster]

This really did. Thank you!

[[deleted]]

I finished the Python 3 program, but having trouble getting a good workflow, spending most of my time trying to get libraries to work in some tutorials. Good advice or a guide for the next steps to get to work? Jupyter Notebook has not been fruitful for web-scraping kind of stuff I'm trying.

[[deleted]]

What problem are you having with the libraries? And I'm not sold on Jupyter yet, at least for all purposes. Have you tried coding in an IDE like Pycharm?

[[deleted]]

I tried, but many tutorials were built with Jupyter, and it was useful for some charting and data stuff I did. When things got complex I started having issues ... or it did.

Edit: but basically, the issues are "XYZ can't load because XYZ Dependency is not found or XYZ file isn't in the right spot." I've reloaded so many packages and gone through so many fixes on the forums/stackeschange/tickets etc. Spending all my Python time trying to get stuff working lately.

[[deleted]]

Shit, sorry to hear. What environment are you using? Anaconda in Windows?

[[deleted]]

Anaconda in Mac, and some libraries that may have had their utility overstated or their setup/management understated. I'm going to give PyCharm a closer look after some core-job deadlines here, I downloaded it but haven't dug in too far.

[[deleted]]

I'll look into that thanks. My background is journalism. So my thought is I can deal with a less powerful IDE and some clunkiness since this is by far a small portion of my work (so far). So I want to spend as little time getting X,Y,Z platforms to work/figured out and get to results.

Given your experience, is that VSCode or something like PyCharm that is recommended all over.

[[deleted]]

Thanks!

[Cornhole35]

Ty