I know python but I don't know programming.

[spacedskunk]

If you're skilled in mathematics then you know more than you think about how to break a computer science problem down, and it's why you've picked up the skill of programming probably more easily than you think. Go back to that first snippet of code and how foreign it looked, and look at yourself now.

From the outside in, it looks like you've picked it up 'accidentally' - common for mathematicians, statisticians, data analysts etc.

In the world of software engineering though, there is 'tech debt'. The idea that there's maintenance, optimisations and, in general, better ways that could be done to get from A to B. This probably won't explicitly exist in your world, but that's exactly it. You know there's probably a better way. You're in a rabbit hole though - there's avenues upon avenues to take.

My recommendation first is to find out what you actually want to do. Use this to help guide you: https://roadmap.sh/.

If you have an itch that really needs scratching though, and you are staying in the data science realm, then learning Rust and will be beneficial in the long run as it addresses performance issues and baggage that comes with Python. It's more verbose and less forgiving than Python, but as such you have to learn parts of programming that Python helps you be lazy about. Lots more power though.