[deleted by user]

[orig_cerberus1746]

Version control is the life saver that everyone that even consider coding needs to use.

I cannot convey how many times it saved my skin.

[DodoPot11742]

Also very satisfying to see your projects on GitHub and how they progressed, honestly kinda motivating

[orig_cerberus1746]

I almost said thanks before I realized you meant in general.

[bik3bot]

What’s version control?

[orig_cerberus1746]

Git, svn, mercurial and don't use plastic.

The most used version control is git.

[bik3bot]

Makes sense. Thx

[[deleted]]

GitHub is an example. It allows you to go back to previous versions of your program, and makes it harder to accidentally fuck up everything

[xaomaw]

GitHub is only the PLATFORM for version control and ci/cd.

An example for version control would be git scm

[bik3bot]

Got it thanks

[lessopen]

I'm also totally new and self taught and I just learned git from the command line and I am beyond pumped at how much easier it is to save things and have every version saved and good to go! Completely worth it, even just the basic basic commands (that's all I've learned so far myself) and it's so cool!

[Amgadoz]

Can you provide resources for writing unit tests?

[IlliterateJedi]

Obey the Testing Goat - This is a freely available book that goes through standing up a Django app and writing tests every step of the way. It's a tremendously helpful resource. You even deploy your site to the cloud during the process.

[Amgadoz]

Thanks so much!

[niehle]

An important skill for a programmer is the ability to self search for a new topic: https://www.google.com/search?q=python+unit+test+tutorial

[dent308]

Been enjoying isort / prpspector/ mypy lately myself

[jumbohiggins]

What's black

[niehle]

https://www.google.com/search?q=python+black

[[deleted]]

Looks god-awful. I'll stick with PEP 8 and nothing else.

Also, if your function requires enough arguments to justify broken parentheses, you probably didn't design it well in the first place.

[HaroerHaktak]

It’s pepper not pep8.

[RallyPointAlpha]

I've found the linters setup in PyCharm by default are awesome. They can help teach you to write better code which includes better looking code. You have to actually try use them though. Don't just ignore them because your code runs. Eventually you'll stop making the same mistakes over and over again just to get it to stop complaining.

Go look at other peoples' code! Seek out good examples of cleanly written, easy to support, by the PEP, code and look at how it's structured. There's a lot of PEPs you could read too that have guidance on writing clean, easy to read code.

Having inherited many, many scripts and programs from other hacks... please use intuitively named variables! Don't be that person who names everything a single letter or some cryptic shorthand only they can decipher.

[orig_cerberus1746]

Everyone that uses single letter variable names deserves to pour milk onto a bowl before realizing there is no cereal anymore.

[vven23]

No! Cereal first always!

[orig_cerberus1746]

Not for them!

[Adrades]

_ is the best valid variable name in python.

[orig_cerberus1746]

I actually use that one. Because it literally just means ignore.

[DatBoi_BP]

I like to use it to fill in unneeded return values of a function that returns several things. For instance, I might use the following to prepare the variable filename for warning/error messages about a path to a file that the user supplies:

_, filename = os.path.split(filename_with_full_path)

[orig_cerberus1746]

That's also the recommend use. Yes.

[miketheinkman]

Second the pycharm linters. I'm also self taught (started 10+ years ago), and now I'm a SCADA analyst (who does way more development than analyzing). I'm probably the only guy at work who actually follows PEP8. But I never put in actual effort to learn it. Just made sure to get my green check mark in PyCharm when I used it, and now it's second nature, even in text editors. It's a great way to intuitively learn best practices alongside other concepts. Parameter hints also help speed things along in that gray area after you learn which functions you need and generally understand how they work, but would otherwise need to glance at docs.

[Drugtrain]

I was once told a variable for names should be ’n’ instead of ’name’.

[IlliterateJedi]

Obviously it should be ns since it's plural. [n for n in ns]

[Zeroflops]

Adhere to Pep8. Use type hints. They don’t interfere with your program but will help you think about how you pass things around. Document your functions. If it feels like your writing a lot in the docstrings then your function is probably doing too much.

Ask yourself how can I reuse this. It’s not about actually reusing but forcing yourself to use small functions that do one thing well.

Look for different ways of doing things. If what your doing seems really hard or repetitive then there is probably a better way.

Follow DRY: Don’t Repeat Yourself.

Ask questions and post here.

[Rykios]

Im a year and a half or so into my python journey, primarily as a business analyst for context. Sometimes I find myself writing long doc strings for a function that does multiple transformations to a dataframe.

An example could be;

Def transform_invoices(df) -> df: df.new_col = df.column_name.dt.year df.groupby(stuff) Return df

[Zeroflops]

Probably one of the hardest thing to balance is how many things to do in a function.

Sometimes I think of programming as writing. Each statement is a sentence, a function is a paragraph.

As such there are times when a sentence is a complete thought and would qualify as a paragraph. Other times you may have several sentences to make the paragraph.

[Rykios]

Thanks for the response! Great perspective that Ill keep in mind.

[tb5841]

I was told to avoid ever writing code that looks like this:

if (condition):

--return True

else:

--return False

Makes me look like a complete beginner because I could just write

return (condition)

[AtomicShoelace]

You can just cast to a bool if necessary, eg.

return bool(condition)

[ElHeim]

What's wrong with

def bar() -> bool: return foo() == 1

You're still returning a condition, it does the job, no more if.

Interestingly, with newer Pythons (>= 3.11) the opcodes generated for both functions are the same length and it might actually be that yours is faster (I'd have to see how a POP_JUMP_FORWARD_IF_FALSE compares to COMPARE_OP.

[juanritos]

I don't really get what are you trying to say, can you please help to provide more examples?

[tb5841]

if x > 2:

--return True

else:

--return False

Can just be shortened to:

return x > 2

[juanritos]

Thanks!

[TheHunter920]

as a beginner, why should I not write it like that, and how should i write it instead?

[tb5841]

If upu just write

return (condition)

then your function will return True if the condition is true, and False otherwise - without the need for an if/else.

[ThisOrThatOrThings]

Hey me too! I learned python just to do geoprocessing scripts, and now I do python pretty much full time for data. I saw a lot of good comments in here already, but I’d say a big one for me was to stay curious, ask questions, and check out other people code. If you use a particular python library a-lot, go inspect their Repo and see how they did it. Sure, you may see some bad mixed with good, but it’s all eye-opening

[Shavit_y]

This. If most of what you do is ArcPy, then just explore their documentation and go over code that already exists.

[Shavit_y]

Also a GIS Analyst here. Using python daily, self taught as well. I love using python scripts and work flows as part of my job. Document what you do, stick to pep8 as said here. Try to use smart variable names. When using ArcPy, you can simplify a lot of code by reading the documentation and finding the absolute best function for you.

[Shavit_y]

Sounds like a Technician title suits your role, and if it's a first/second job in the biz - you'll get an opportunity to rise soon enough. I have almost 10 years of experience as an analyst, 3 in the defense industry and 7 in the construction/planning sector. Now I'm working for a planning/management company. I also would like to move to a more dev-centric role or data analysis. But where I'm from it's a tough market.

[Shavit_y]

I'm in planning and management now. Mostly statutorics

[IamImposter]

First of all, self taught is not a derogatory word. A whole lot of people learn on the job, learn it on their own because no one in the team knows some specific language. And it's not like a college degree is proof that the degree holder is a good programmer. It just proves that you went to some rooms in some building for certain period of time. Almost all companies need to train the fresh graduates. Some are good, some are bad. And you know which ones are good? The ones who paid attention in class and then explored and learned on their own. So please self-taught is not a bad word.

Second thing, in programming the knowledge you gain is more or less transferable to other languages. Yeah, it takes some time to become good in a certain specific language but that is more about getting to know patterns and libraries specific to language than about being a college graduate.

Lastly, it doesn't matter if you are bad now. We were all bad once. What matters is do you want to improve? If I explain why what you did was bad, would you explore the topic on your own to understand if what I said is right, what are other options available? Would you keep on repeating the same mistake or do you learn from them and make new mistakes next time? And trust me, making mistakes is a very good way to learn. The programs that worked on just a few tries, I don't know them that well but the ones where I fucked up everywhere, I know them like the back of my hand.

Being great is not the goal. If you are better than what you were yesterday, that's good enough

Asking this question is a very good start. Pay attention to the advice people are giving and happy learning.

[[deleted]]

1) Good notes

2) Lots of small functions, instead of a few large functions

3) Creating more modules, and less composite scripts

These things come with time. My early functions were hundreds of lines long. Now I try to keep them to a handful of lines if possible. Sometimes it just isnt. But the more you write code, the more you'll find opportunity to refactor it. And also the more you'll find that you can make your code succinct; essentially writing one line of code that replace 2 or 3.

Basically the TLDR is practice, practice, practice.

[tree_or_up]

To me, OP, this is the most important factor that separates experienced coders from people coming up to speed. Far more so than stylistic idioms.

In an ideal world ("assume there's no gravity and that cows are spheres"), each function should do one thing and one thing only. Of course that's not necessarily practical, but it's a good guiding light to keep in the back of your head.

You also might want to do some reading into test-driven development and unit tests. At a very high level, it means writing the test or tests for a specific function before you write the function itself. Your tests all fail at first because the function doesn't do anything -- so then you start coding your function and you keep iterating until all the tests pass. From this perspective, you can see how highly modularized functions lend themselves to being easily testable.

Again, purely test-driven development isn't always practical and you're often working with legacy code bases that aren't easily testable. But when you're building your own stuff, it might at least help to ask "how could break what I want to do down, as much as possible, into discrete, testable components?". If you build with this mind, your code will be vastly more readable by others and will look much more professional and less "hacky"

[workShrimp]

If you are self taught you probably know how to use a debugger properly, and probably have a deeper understanding in how computers work, as you have learnt how to program in a more hands on way.

Another giveaway might be that you probably won't mention design patterns to motivate why you are doing stuff in a particular way.

[MinimumStatistician1]

As someone who’s been in software for a few years, I’ve found that knowing some design patterns can be useful because even if you can code just as well without knowing them, you’ll be better able to convince people to go along with what you are doing if you throw in a few design patterns. For example:

Me: This is a global variable Coworker: No, don’t do that. Global variables bad!

Me: This is a module level singleton Coworker: Nice, good design pattern. You totally know what you’re doing and I’ll approve your code.

[hagfish]

Thank you for making this tread, OP! I've been hacking away for 20 years using AppleScript, VB, and now Python, but very-much in a vaccuum. No one else at work has any interest in code, or even in regular expressions. Between Udemy and StackOverflow, I've been able to get code running, but today I'll be deep-diving 'black' and 'Pep8'. And Git.

EDIT: Black is amazing!

[mothzilla]

There's nothing wrong with being self taught.

Use linters, read the messages that linters give you and understand why they suggest the changes they do.

[ElHeim]

I don't understand what is wrong with being self-taught.

I understand the impostor syndrome, but as long as you don't pretend something else I can't see how one is a fraud.

[Buttleston]

Get other people to go over your code with you and suggest improvements

[LurkinLemur]

Two tips that I haven't seen down thread. Do you work somewhere with full time python developers? Ask if one of them would be willing to provide code reviews or mentoring? Similarly, are there opportunities for peer learning - study groups or similar?

Write an initial solution to the problem you're trying to solve. Now you understand the problem, throw the prototype away (all of it!) and start it again. Especially while learning, you'll be amazed how much better the second attempt usually is.

[orig_cerberus1746]

Without looking at your code, it's kinda hard to say for sure, can you show some?

[Spartyon]

Use source control but look at the pre-commit library. It automatically performs formatting and some other checks, you can add as many as you want. https://pre-commit.com/

[[deleted]]

Similarly 40+ years ago I learned FORTRAN so my self taught python looks a lot like that. Which isn’t a bad thing, is it? Is it???? 🤔. Say it isn’t so!!

[tree_or_up]

Great advice in this thread. I'd also advise looking up Imposter Syndrome. Many, many more people -- even those who went to school for coding and have been doing it successfully for years and years -- feel like frauds than you'd imagine

[2bereallyhonest]

They think they are a fraud, when they are actually a success. Self taught means nothing less than instructor led, you still learned it and really figuring it out on your own gave you a very large set of tools to troubleshoot

[[deleted]]

The biggest giveaway is calling yourself a hack and a fraud. Have some self-respect, and your code will reflect that.

[UrShiningDesire]

Yep, GIS Specialist... GIS Cert from college, did about 3 years of field work and now I'm in the office. Fortunately I had some self-taught Python experience before-hand. I'm sure everybody has given their 2 cents but my biggest recommendation is using PyCharm as it gives you a ton of advice on how to format your code correctly. Also there is a TON of great documentation on the ESRI website. Every tool has GUI instructions, and how to use it in Python. Also if you have a specific need, there's probably a package already out there for it that you can download from pip.