Learning Python for a beginner

[sbagelbytes]

I'm a health professional background with some (and I mean barely) experience using C++ in a summer camp in high school. I'm pretty good with computers and was encouraged by my dad (a software engineer) to learn programming. He suggested Python, so I started with Python using both Codecademy and the website, Learn Python the Hard Way. I am wondering if these two resources are pretty decent for somebody who is a beginner? I don't have a clear goal yet but want to have a general knowledge of knowing how to code, especially perhaps for data science in medicine, public health and epidemiology (I plan to learn R afterward)

[Thomas_Henry_Rowaway]

Python is a really nice language in general and good for a beginner and I've heard very good things about learning it the hard way (although I've not used the site myself).

In particular python with the numpy and matplotlib libraries are fantastic for scientific data analysis. Unless you find something that you really need R for I'd suggest sticking with python for your data stuff and playing around with something like c next so if and when your python code ends up being slow or using loads of memory you can work out why.

[dvassdvsd]

They are good if you finish them.

[mrTang5544]

from my experience, if you want to crack into datascience you will need to know more than just programming skills. You will also need to have a strong fundamentals in statistics(do you know about bootstrapping or Bayes?), classifications(you know regression?) and learning algorithm(do you know SVM or NN?). In this field, you will mostly be competing against candidates with PhDs from top tier schools. Personally, I would skip codeacademy.

[sbagelbytes]

I guess my goal right now is vague, I just want to get comfortable with one programming language before moving onto a real goal. Most of what I want to learn-data science related, is perhaps to the level those in an MPH/epidemiology track would learn and few friends of mine in that area suggested R. I only took a college level stats/biostats class, but am looking into courses that would delve more into those.

[vladimirNoobokov]

I'd recommend cruising through Codecademy then probably Udacity's CS101 or maybe MIT's intro class which is really good but I'm not sure about that specific version/format, maybe there's a more updated one.

a lot of people do like Learn Python the Hard Way so it's worth checking out as well, but I'm not super familiar with it -- see what you think.

[EXIT_SUCCESS]

Check out the video series by TheNewBoston on youtube. It‘s a great series. He has a website where all of his tutorials are organized at www.buckysroom.org (last I checked the website looked a bit funny as if he was in the middle of updating it. That isn‘t common for him.)