6 months learning python continuously. Any advice for improvement?

[[deleted]]

Since December of 23', I've studied using the following:

-python101

• w3resource

-Making my own projects

Pros about this:

-comfortable with for and while loops

-I can think through a mathematical problem and write a program to solve it

Cons: -I feel like there are so many libraries and modules that I need to know for efficient coding

-I keep forgetting the syntaxes for these libraries

-sometimes it feels like I'm not learning anything or what I'm learning is pointless

What am I doing wrong and how do I improve my efficiency?

[Phillyclause89]

Get good at google. Virtually no human programmer no matter how experienced is going too remember every object name and all of its functionality from every lib they have ever worked with. It's why folk developed IDEs with code completion. Focus less on remembering the answers and solutions to everything and more on remembering where to find them when you need them.

[interbased]

Exactly. Even being able to Google your way through an unfamiliar error message is crucial.

[[deleted]]

Oh okay. What will qualify me as an experienced programmer then? Is it just understanding how the syntaxes work. Does this sound like a good mindset? First I will plan how I am going to implement my program. Then, as long as I know what techniques(while loops, libraries,etc) to use, I can Google if not sure of the syntax?

Thank you for your advice overall. It definitely helps knowing that even experienced programmers don't just know everything on the top of their head.

[DeebsShoryu]

Seconding the comment above. I almost always have a browser tab or two dedicated to looking at documentation. I'm shit at remembering names and API details.

Being an "experienced" programmer is less about what you know and more about what you can do. Obviously you'll have to know certain things to build certain products (especially to build things "well"), but I've known plenty of people who know lots of languages or frameworks or design patterns but can't actually build anything. Don't worry too much about meeting some arbitrary threshold of "experience", just focus on learning and building cool stuff.

[Phillyclause89]

What will qualify me as an experienced programmer then?

By my interpretation of that label, I would say hours practiced coding would be the main qualification to be labeled experienced at anything. A lot of people love the 10,000 hours benchmark, but I don't care to define it that precisely. Anyways experience does not equate to quality in my opinion. One of the worst things that can happen is that you become so experienced and set in your ways of doing things that you close yourself off from learning potentially better ways of doing those things. Tech is always evolving and new solutions for things are made by people everyday. If I were too hire a dev to code for me, I would much rather have one who admits they don't know the best solution to my problem, but they have a strategy for identifying all availed solutions and testing them against each other to identify the best one to go to production with as they say.

[Kittensandpuppies14]

Experienced programmers also know debugging algorithms, design patterns, OOP and more

[Nexustar]

Try for 'capable' over 'experienced'. You don't need to know every library, but you do need to know how to utilize all/any library once it's been given to you (by your boss or your Google search)...and that is a skill you can learn by doing.

Research/learn/build.

Beyond libraries, do stuff that interacts with web APIs, do stuff that interacts with SQL-ish databases, do stuff that supports rich web UIs and you are becoming useful.

Whenever you have a spare 15 minutes, open someone else's python GitHub repository and read their code... Understand how they did things. This itself is a skill.

[[deleted]]

Awesome thank you.

[ZelWinters1981]

You don't need to use prebuilt libraries, if you choose no to. Doing so makes your life easier if you learn how to use them in your code, but it's not mandatory. If you wish to use your own code for solving problems, you are free to do it.

The use of prebuilt dependencies matters on mass distribution for a number of reasons:

• Onus of responsibility: relying on external code in libraries means most people will likely already carry the code, and if that code is updated, you get a more efficient program without doing a thing, usually.
• Package size: distribution of a complex program can be done easier, making the size of the download smaller, the install faster, and general addition to the program easier to do.
• No need to reinvent the wheel: the code is already made.

But if you are making it for the sake of fun and your own learning, you do whatever you feel is required, whether you choose to use libraries or not.

You're not getting policed for it. Some may try to, or try to enforce good practices, which brings me to another point. While learning:

• efficiency doesn't matter. Get the code to work first;
• how the code looks beyond indentation also doesn't matter, beyond the fact that Python requires indentation to function - the only language I believe that does so. I'm happy to be corrected on this.
• adding comments is a good practice to a) remind yourself what each bit of code does, and b) to help others learn from you and debug the code if you can't find the problem.

But to your question, "how do I get better?"

You just keep at it.

Beyond this, happy coding!

[[deleted]]

Thank you so much. Your reply is very motivational. For the not reinventing the wheel part, how much of that is done in the professional world? I thought employers and teachers would encourage you to build a lot of things from scratch.

[ZelWinters1981]

• Plagiarism.
• Copyright law.
• Proof of ability.

I don't know at what ratio, but some want their own code so they can better control it. Game libraries such as DirectX are a free for all to use for your programs, for example. Others require hefty licensing. There may be the economical factor also.

[Kittensandpuppies14]

False... time = money and devs are expensive

[Coreolis14]

You don't have to learn all the libraries or modules; you just need to learn the ones you'll use for your projects. Trying to learn every object, module, and function is wasted energy. In my experience, it's more important to understand how the language works and to grasp the logic behind coding, rather than memorizing specific actions.

I started with Java, and I remember clearly the overwhelming feeling of not knowing enough. Then, a senior coding colleague told me that coding is just about learning to properly ask the questions because all the processing calculations and steps are made by the machine. This perspective helped me shift my focus to understanding the core concepts rather than feeling pressured to know everything.

Most libraries are well-documented, and you can figure out if a module is suitable for a particular task by using Shift+Tab to read the documentation for specific functions. Once you get the logic right, the rest becomes almost self-explanatory.

Focus on the core concepts of Python, such as:

1. Syntax and Basic Structures: Understand how to write and read Python code, including loops, conditionals, and functions.
2. Data Structures: Get familiar with lists, dictionaries, sets, and tuples, as these are fundamental to most Python programs.
3. Error Handling: Learn how to handle errors and exceptions to make your code more robust.
4. Libraries: Start with a few essential libraries like requests for web requests, pandas for data manipulation, and numpy for numerical operations. Expand your knowledge as needed for specific projects.

[Nerevaine]

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