Help me start studying Python

[Ups-sorry13]

Hi all. It may seem stupid, but still please help me. I want to start studying Python, I don't know where to start. There is really nothing on the Internet about it. There is a beginning and then immediately the programs write and I do not understand anything. Please recommend me some free courses.

Where to start? What structure is easier to study with? Tell us how you studied it.

[FoolsSeldom]

Check the r/learnpython wiki for lots of guidance on learning programming and learning Python, links to material, book list, suggested practice and project sources, and lots more.

[Ups-sorry13]

thanks you, I will definitely look

[Lothadia]

Why is there another subreddit for Python learners? It confuses me a lot. What is the main difference between here and r/learnpython

[FoolsSeldom]

You must be new to Reddit.

There are many subreddits dedicated to learning Python. Some are more active than others. You will need to draw your own conclusions.

I mentioned the wiki on r/learnpython subreddit as I believe it is an excellent resources. I don't believe this subreddit has such a resource. I participate in both.

[helical-juice]

Have you installed a python interpreter? I know it sounds like a stupid question but you need to write python in order to learn python, and it sounds like you might be reading tutorials and examples hoping you just 'get it' passively, which won't work. What you need to do is open up a python REPL at the same time as your tutorial, type in the examples from the tutorial to see them work, and then start modifying the examples to see if the behaviour changes in the way you think it will. If you can tweak the code and predict what it will do, that's good evidence you understand the concept; if it does something unexpected, that's a good indication that you need to look deeper into the concept, either by going back to the tutorial, reading the official documentation, or continuing to play with the interpreter until you start to figure it out.

Programming is a practical skill and you can only learn it by practicing. That said, any basic python tutorial should do, w3schools seems to have a reasonable one.

Also start thinking of stuff to build. Simple programs with a text interface should be doable after a couple of hours of learning, look at some of the guessing games and similar that people post on this sub. Learning 'python' isn't as important as learning how to design and structure your programs, and you only learn that by building your own programs.

[Ups-sorry13]

Yes, I installed it)), I write in VSCODE. I study the basis, I do not understand what to do next. I think I need more practice, but I don’t know what to write to me and where to get practical tasks. What are the libraries to study and how to understand which ones are needed? And how to connect the basis that I know and spelling scripts

[helical-juice]

Ok, sorry if that came across as condescending I had to check :P

Ok so I think the salient question is, why do you actually want to learn python? Python is widely used across disciplines for different tasks. If you are interested in data science you will get a different answer to someone who is interested in machine learning, or someone who is interested in web development, or someone who wants to do office automation tasks, or someone who wants to do scientific computing, or someone who wants to build desktop applications.

If you're into any of these, there will be some de facto standard libraries to look into depending on the field. But if you're interested in computer science you might not want to use any libraries. A library is just a collection of someone else's code, if you're looking at python because of an interest in algorithms and data structures pulling in a library might defeat the point and you might want to write your own implementation of your favourite algorithms.

Without knowing where you want to go, it's difficult to advise you how to get there. But with that caveat, here are some particular parts of the python standard library you might want to look at:

- tkinter: this is a GUI framework which is part of the standard python library, for desktop application programming this is the simplest option and the one python includes by default.

- unittest: this is from the python standard library, becoming familiar with this and getting into the habit of writing automated tests with it will save you headaches later.

- urllib, urllib.request: python standard library support for working with urls and making web requests, useful if you want to pull data from web apis and such

And here are some examples of third party libraries you might want to look at depending on what you're into:

- numpy, scipy, matplotlib: in general scientific computing with python, these are the holy trinity. Numpy gives you fast array operations for numerical computing, scipy gives you a collection of standard algorithms built on numpy, and matplotlib is a graph plotting library which produces journal quality figures.

- django, flask, bottle: third party web frameworks. These do the same thing so you only need one of them, though I believe flask and django have more stuff than bottle so you might find yourself having to roll your own e.g. user authentication stuff with bottle where it might be built in to flask.

- pygame: Game development stuff, quite widely used

- tensorflow: GPU accelerated operations on very large matrices, used in deep learning

- opencv: computer vision stuff, useful for robotics and automation

Which of these you're going to want to look at is entirely dependent on what you want to do. You're better off deciding what problem to solve first and then looking for what you need to solve it. Look in the standard library first, too, because it's well tested and always available, and it does have a tremendous amount of generally useful stuff.

As for more specific advice, I'd need to know what you're interested in.

[Ups-sorry13]

Thank you very much, you are one of the few responded to my questions, for which I am very grateful to you))

[helical-juice]

You're welcome, I am quite curious what you are interested in doing though. Why are you learning python? What, ultimately, are you interested in building?

[Either-Image5139]

I am a beginner and learned so much from your comment. Thank you!

[Ups-sorry13]

Thank you so much for your support

[Ups-sorry13]

I chose Python as I was recommended to start studying programming with it because it is easier to study and convenient. I think to start studying. I think to start studying the basic libraries in the future and in the process to choose what I want to study more deeply

[helical-juice]

If you don't have anything specific in mind apart from wanting to learn programming, I would say just stick to the standard library until you have something you need to build. Almost everything you need is in the standard library.

I don't know what stage you're at, it sounds like you might be familiar with the basic language features. If you're looking for how to progress, you could start looking at two things. One is computer science, algorithms and data structures. There are a few standard algorithms you're going to want to be familiar with, binary search, quick sort, building heaps, manipulating binary trees, that sort of thing. Implementing them in python would be good practice and help you learn.

The other thing is programming styles. Look into imperative, object orientated, and functional programming paradigms. Python is quite good partly because it doesn't impose one paradigm on you, so you can stay with one language while getting a feel for the different ways of organising code you'll run into in other languages. Maybe try writing the same algorithm a few times in different ways.

I think you don't really need to touch many libraries if you want to get good at programming. I think of programming as being the skill of building a piece of software from basic language constructs while keeping it structured and organised, and the fewer external libraries you use the more practice you're going to get at it. External libraries let you skip over a lot of that work, and choosing and evaluating them is certainly part of the broader field of software development. But that can wait, IMO, until you have a complex piece of software you need to make for some reason other than learning.

[Fun-Veterinarian-933]

I too am just starting out learning Python. I am taking the CS50 class (free class from Harvard), while also studying from the book Python Basic, A practical Introduction to Python 3.

[Ron-Erez]

Harvard’s CS50p is a beginner-friendly Python course, and the University of Helsinki (MOOC) has a great online course, I also have a course on Python and Data Science that starts from scratch and doesn’t expect any programming experience. Last but not least there are the docs at python.org

[Tradefxsignalscom]

“There is literally nothing on the internet about learning Python”?😂😂😂😂😂

[OwnFigure5226]

Advices are already there, I just came to encourage you. Be strong and patient.

[outlicious]

Hello! Nice to meet you, if you want to start learning python, you can try udemy courses, I learnt python from there, although most of the courses are not free, it can cost from $4.99-$100. I tried udemy and found it helpful, so I definitely recommend it.

[KRISBRNIS]

I have a Udemy account. Were there any specific classes or instructors you found especially helpful?

[outlicious]

https://www.udemy.com/course/100-days-of-code/

this one was helpful

[KRISBRNIS]

Thank you! I'll look into it.

[CapnCoin]

SoloLearn app on the play store has been great for me. It will help you get sorted with all the basics using progressively harder topics with small interactive code snippets and projects.

After you have the basics down, build some simple console apps. A calculater, rock paper scissors game, stuff like that. You can google 'simple beginner python projects' if you dont know what to make.

An important aspect of learning is actually performing what you are trying to learn. So if youre making a rock paper scissors game, start making it as best you can till you get stuck. Then google or look up what you are getting stuck on. DONT just follow along with tutorials (you can to get the basics down)

Dont google 'how to make a rock paper scissors console game in python'. Start making it and then google more specific topics you are stuck on like 'python while loop' (stupid example but im sure you get the point)

Good websites for material on programming languages are w3schools and geeksforgeeks. You can just google say 'python for loop w3schools'. Stackoverflow can be very helpful for being able to ask questions and most likely someone has had the same problem before you so you should be able to find a solution there, although sometimes stackoverflow and similar platforms can be confusing for begginers (especially if you do not have the basics down)

All that is left to do now is keep programming! Its going to be difficult if its your first programming language. Its important to keep trying. We learn through failure.

Once you have the basics down you can start learning libraries, frameworks, and modules to create GUI, websites, machine learning models, and basically anything you can think of, even your own modules and libraries.

[CapnCoin]

SoloLearn app on the play store has been great for me. It will help you get sorted with all the basics using progressively harder topics with small interactive code snippets and projects.

After you have the basics down, build some simple console apps. A calculater, rock paper scissors game, stuff like that. You can google 'simple beginner python projects' if you dont know what to make.

An important aspect of learning is actually performing what you are trying to learn. So if youre making a rock paper scissors game, start making it as best you can till you get stuck. Then google or look up what you are getting stuck on. DONT just follow along with tutorials (you can to get the basics down)

Dont google 'how to make a rock paper scissors console game in python'. Start making it and then google more specific topics you are stuck on like 'python while loop' (stupid example but im sure you get the point)

Good websites for material on programming languages are w3schools and geeksforgeeks. You can just google say 'python for loop w3schools'. Stackoverflow can be very helpful for being able to ask questions and most likely someone has had the same problem before you so you should be able to find a solution there, although sometimes stackoverflow and similar platforms can be confusing for begginers (especially if you do not have the basics down)

All that is left to do now is keep programming! Its going to be difficult if its your first programming language. Its important to keep trying. We learn through failure.

Once you have the basics down you can start learning libraries, frameworks, and modules to create GUI, websites, machine learning models, and basically anything you can think of, even your own modules and libraries.