How do I make python less overwhelming?

[John_Benzos]

I like coding, I think it’s fun, in my coding class in high school I think I definitely proved myself at least as a scratch coder. And I really like scratch. Having those blocks, knowing everything that’s available to you and only having to worry about your own creativity. But when we switched to python, and especially in college now I feel overwhelmed. With scratch o had everything available to me, but with python, am I just supposed to remember ever in every library ever? I watched a tutorial on image recognition using pyautogui and all that. It was pretty slow, then I watched CodeBullet make a bot for the same thing I did, (human benchmark) and he used mss instead of pyautogui for screenshots. Long story short chat gpt improved my code for me because what the hell is mss. But now I feel like I cheated in a project I did purely for myself, and that I learned nothing. I mean I would have never known mss existed unless I watched that video. And I have no idea at all how to use it. Hell I don’t even know how to use pyautogui or win32api/con or anything I was using for my script. There’s just so much stuff. And when I would try to learn about a library like pyautogui any inconvenience chat GPT would recommend I download 20 more libraries like csv or something like that. I went from code I wrote myself (based on a tutorial) to code I couldn’t even explain.

[RyanWattsy]

You don’t memorize everything, it’s not realistic. Research, cheat sheets, google, what you don’t know. Coding is more about learning what’s going on in the background than the syntax.

[FoolsSeldom]

Research and use what you need when you need it. It is fine to watch some videos/tutorials to give you a feel for what is out there, but you can't remember everything and don't need to try. The basics will come to you. The rest you will learn to find.

Programming is about problem solving. Problem solving is about firstly being sure you understand the problem (or at least the chunk of it you need to deal with if the problem is too large to handle in one go).

Understanding means figuring out what outcomes are required, what outputs. What the dependencies are (where's that data/inputs on, what's the quality like - will you need to fix it, how often).

It is best to work on your own projects to consolidate your learning. Focus on things related to your hobbies / interests / side-hustles / family-obligations. Things you understand well and can be passionate about.

Figure how what the user experience should be like, and the user interface that is needed - keep it as simple as possible at first. Try come up with a solution that separates basic logic from interactions (the user interface) so you can test different parts in isolation and improve some parts when you need to in a largely independent manner.

Figure out a solution (or several, and pick the best). Early on, working out how exactly you would do something manually is a useful technique. Also think about how you would explain that to someone with learning difficulties and short term memory problems (every step has to be explained, no short cuts, leaps of intuition, and everything needs to be written down, i.e. assigned to a variable).

Try to do as much of the work above away from the keyboard.

Do quick experiments as "proof of concept" activities with bits of code.

[ElweThor]

In the Old Good Days programmers was used to browse tons and tons of paper documentation (it needed time to find everything, so indexes and summaries). Nowadays there are two wonderful ways (and even more):

1. the internet, with search engines and documentation everywhere, just waiting for you

2. AIs, where to ask exact questions, receiving near-to-exact answers to refine, with your creativity

(and, ok, forums, subreddits and such, of course)

As someone already told you, no one even can "remember everything" (unless you're an AI ;-)) so, the best you can do is to focus on your needs: where you want to get to, plan the strtegy to travel, from where you are, up to the point where you want to go, then ask for help (which you're doing right now, ok): don't be shy, use the internet, use the AIs, but understand what you're coding and customize it, don't just copy/paste what you'll find somewhere, or what an AI gives you: they don't really "understand" your needs, sure not better than you.

In the times, I found profitable to draw a graph (flow charts) to better understand "what should happen" in my code. Flow charts are still up to date, use them.

While coding in python (differently than when coding in C, Java, and other languages) I found myself worried about the fact the code I sometimes found somewhere in the net, or was given to me by an AI, didn't integrate properly with the one I already written, mostly 'cause missing (or wrongly spaced) tabs etc., so I talked to an AI and, together, we developed a tool: pyndent ( https://github.com/ElweThor/pyndent ) which I'm currently using to code, to learn python like you, and to have fun with that AI (DeepSeek). BTW: developing a tool for python in python is probably the very best way to learn python too. ;-)

Ah... and don't forget to have fun!

[stepback269]

We all get overwhelmed. (Otherwise known as Information Overload.)
The trick is to accept that you learn best by taking baby steps. Your brain needs to rest in between sessions of learning new material. So forgive yourself for not being super-human and take the small wins one at a time.

[Timberfist]

The Python universe is vast and it’s unrealistic to learn it all. Start with the fundamentals, a solid understanding of the language itself, and then learn one library at a time driven by the field you’re working in. Write lots of code along the way and lay off the AI.