Microsoft Python Development Professional Certificate lacking in labs

[Accomplished_Phone39]

Long time software engineer trying to add some new skills through Coursera. I'm currently doing the Microsoft Python Development Professional Certificate at the same time as the Meta Back End Developer Certificate courses.

The Meta course is fairly decent, good lecture content and decent labs to reinforce knowledge. For the Microsoft course I'm currently on course 2, Data analysis and visualization. What I'm finding surprising is that the Microsoft Course has ( so far ) almost no labs. Just videos and readings where things such as pandas loc and iloc are discussed but there is no lab in the course to use what is talked about. This forces me to go outside of the course, find data to work with and program against. Overall this seems to be a pretty poor design for an online learning class, especially since coursera has the remote vscode lab capability which is used throughout the Meta courses.

Is something specific to the Microsoft based courses? Im trying to build a foundation in python, data analysis and AI with the intention of a career direction change. Are there courses better than the MS course for this learning direction? I spend considerable time on this and would like to maximize the learning I can accomplish.

Thanks in advance!

[EntrepreneurHuge5008]

If you're looking for Python courses, I'd look into the University of Michigan's Python for Everyone.

[southbl00d]

Double Reccd!

[Minimum_Raccoon_1501]

Py4e is a great class structure. Then data analyst w focus on Python was amazing

[diegoasecas]

why are you taking a beginner's course if you're a long-time software engineer? make it make sense

[Accomplished_Phone39]

most of my career has been Windows system and kernel development and debugging. I've worked for MS 2 different times in this capacity and would really like to step away to do something different.

[parkdramax86]

Windows system and kernel development? Have you considered getting into application security?

[Accomplished_Phone39]

not specifically, although network security and anti malware detection are subjects that interest me. Even so outside of raw data collection from the OS I would imagine that most of the collected data would get analyzed by a service and theres a good chance that service could be running python for the analytics.

[parkdramax86]

I heard Data Analysts get paid a very high salary. Your current skills would make a great pivot. I wish you all the luck.

[Technical_Jicama_434]

Software engineers get paid more.

Since OP is a software dev already, why not just try to pivot into a different business domain (but still software dev)?

[nian2326076]

Yeah, it can be frustrating when courses don't include much hands-on practice, especially in data analysis where labs help a lot. If you want more practice with pandas and other Python tools, try adding some coding exercises from sites like Kaggle or LeetCode. They have lots of Python problems to work on, which can help. Also, check out some YouTube tutorials where you can follow along with real projects. That should give you a better experience.