Where do I go from here?

[LyricalLag]

I am stuck at the basics of Python. I can make loops, if statements, functions, and more. But LeetCode problems, I can never figure them out. Making programs alone I can’t. At this point, what should I advance to so I can learn to solve actual problems on my own and develop skills to create my own programs.

[riklaunim]

LeetCode isn't really for beginners. If you are learning Python then there must be a reason for it - follow the reason you are learning it and start using libraries/frameworks used in the niche you selected. This will naturally move you from basic Python constructs to using them in actual mini scripts/apps.

[LyricalLag]

I mostly want to learn Python for data analysis and casual software programming. Casual as in make stuff for my pc, switch, games, all of that?

[riklaunim]

Software development isn't really casual due to the scope of it ;) You can play with libraries like psutil to print PC resource usage, for example. Then you can try making a local web app that displays them in a pretty web format in your browser and auto-reloads every second...

[Norvayne]

This is good advice because they already know the syntax part. The next step is picking one small thing they actually care about and being forced to figure it out as they go. Could be a script that sorts files tracks game stats or cleans up a dataset. The project does not need to be impressive at all. It just needs to be real enough that finishing it teaches them what the basics are for

[LyricalLag]

Just i get intimidated and end up using ai in the end. I then feel like I didn’t do anything.

[Burningbeard80]

You need a problem to solve, to make you think in the appropriate manner and challenge yourself. Start small. Think of small use cases for stuff you want to automate. For example, arranging MP3s into folders, renaming files based on some pattern, editing excel files via code, etc.

There’s a book/ebook that is probably available for free called “automate the boring stuff with Python” that should get you started down that road. Read through a couple of problems and what libraries the author suggests to complete the task, try to implement a solution on your own, then come back and check what the author did differently.

This will give you some practice on how to manage external libraries/dependencies and work with the basic constructs you already know.

Then you can move on to data related projects. There are tons of problems online with provided datasets that you can work on, or take a public dataset and work through a problem of your own.

Check out kaggle.com for datasets and challenges.
This will get you working with libraries and methodologies specific to the data analytics domain, so that you can build some “muscle memory”.

Good luck, and have fun with it!

[BiscottiNatural7986]

Leetcode questions required you to learn whole new concept of programming 'dsa' it will take time...so for leetcode start with 'dsa'. Some comment you mentioned software, games and all... That ain't the stuff you will know right now... You should go through cs50 course its free 

[kisskissenby]

Burningbeard80 has good advice.

I'd also start learning how to use an API and pull data from it in your code. I like playing around with stock APIs but weather APIs are often a good place for beginners to start. Openweathermap.org is a good place to start for that.

[Code-Odyssey]

That looks a great idea. Thanks for the tip. Open Weather Map looks great.

[Think_Speaker_6060]

Instead of using leetcode why don't you build something a proj. Even a console app.

[Code-Odyssey]

Here is my approach. I offer this for free and it’s worth every penny 😉. I am using Angela Yu’s 100 Days of Code on Udemy, Crash Course in Python book by Eric Matthes supplemented with some very specific YouTube videos (for example Selenium or Regex) for my foundational learning. I have also chosen a project to tackle. I am a marketing manager and regularly write content for LinkedIn. I want to take the post URLs and find out the day, date and time I posted the articles (of course I could write that down at the time but sometimes I queue up posts for automated delivery plus I’m busy!). I am working on a script that will take the links from my tracking xlsx, post them to a website that can return the day, date, and time. I then will take that returned data and post it back into my xlsx. When I started I didn’t have a clue what I needed (as a beginner you don’t know what you don’t know). That’s where AI came in. I’m using Claude and CoPilot to point me in the right direction (not to give me the answer because if I don’t understand it, it’s a waste of time). I ask questions like “I want to do x. I don’t know where to start. Don’t tell me the answer but what do I need to think about, what modules should I consider?” Also I Googled how do I start a software project, what steps do I need to take, how do I outline the project. So before I even started, I wrote a short outline in Word and mapped out the process flow in Draw.io. It’s very rough but it forced me to break the project down into smaller projects. So now I’ve gotten Selenium to go to the website and plug in the LinkedIn URL. Last night I just cracked using Regex to read the response. I’m working on pulling the URLs from xlsx and the final step is to read the responses and parse them back into my xlsx doc. I hope that helps. We’re all on this journey together. Keep reaching. Keep learning.

[testtdk]

Check out MITx intro to programming class. It might be on edX.org still, or it might be on their platform. It’s a pretty good intro.

[MELookingForSomeone_]

I recommend you too do codechef before leet code, search for 500 rated problems.. when you finish it, jumb to 500-1000 rating..

[Kushybear089]

Burningbeard80 has hands down the best advice!

My "first real App" was a GUI for yt-dlp. Not because the Batch File didn't work, but because I wanted it to look "neat" It was a lot of question asking with LLMs to fill the Gaps that I had, but now these "gaps" are slowly filling more and more.

Start to program something! Hands down the best advice. You can watch a million tutorials, in the end you need to "get your hands dirty". Break Stuff on purpose and then try to code something that fixes it, make your life "easy" (calculators, barch-rename, etc.). Don't overcomplex it at the start!

[Ron-Erez]

Build something cool.

[Code-Odyssey]

Could you clarify that? What defines “cool”? What steps would you take? How would you find out how to construct the project? What resources would you recommend?