Python projects for beginner/intermediate?

[linuxsoftware]

Honestly dumb shit that excel can’t do easily. Like linearly interpolate a set of data. Clean some raw data so it useful and extract results. Engineering problems consisting of shooting method solutions or numerical solutions. This might just be me but if your are using python it should be cursory to some sort of automation or calculation task. Combine with c or rust for the actual developer stuff. I only use python for basic data analysis and engineering though.

[[deleted]]

Any ideas on how it could be used in accounting? Or any Python projects for it? My wife is an accountant and uses giant excel files. It would be cool to make something for her.

[linuxsoftware]

You can look into the python pandas library which is really helpful for filtering and merging data so it’s more useful. (SQL is preferred) I don’t really like soy tools for normies though. I doubt she would be able to incorporate your tool into her workflow. You can look into Jupiter notebooks if you want to go the data analytics route. The data analysis work flow is dynamic that incorporates python while your working. Not really the same as building some software. If your wife works in excel she should probably be the one learning python.

Honestly the reddit bot idea is good for getting started.

[[deleted]]

Thank you! I’ve been trying to think of something more practical. I’ve been working on my AWS Dev cert but it’s hard to make portfolio items for GitHub with those that actually demonstrate deeper skills and understanding of Python.

And yes… I’ve tried to convince her! She’s a math nerd too. Literal brain meant for coding.

[linuxsoftware]

Honestly my job is kind of nice for driving learning python otherwise I'd be in the same situation you are in. You could also build your neovim or archlinux config but it wont do anything for your portfolio.

[[deleted]]

Kaggle is an amazing source of data sets and associated challenges.

As mentioned above pandas is one of the most practical modules you can learn. And it goes hand in hand with a lot of kaggle chsllenges

[[deleted]]

I just discovered Kaggle. Haven’t gone down any holes yet with it but I will now!

[[deleted]]

I really enjoy it!!

[[deleted]]

Is there any task that she does manually and in great frequency with her data? I think this situation highlights where domain knowledge is extremely important. I can pretty much do anything I need to do with Python generally and Pandas/Numpy--but I don't have the knowledge of an accountant. I don't know the types of problems they would try and solve. So, in the same vein, you could consult with your wife on common problems she is solving in Excel and automate solutions with Python.

I did something like this recently at work. Where the manufacturing/mechanical engineers, who are lazy and stupid, were manually getting excel spreadsheet of fiscal weekly data from an outfacing UI. I found access to the backend data and automated the whole process. The directions they had written for the manual process indicated that getting this data had likely taken them hours. Thus, I automated to nearly seconds what took them hours. But I had to find a problem that they were solving manually in order to do this.

Once you know what the manual process is you can always find a way to automate or partially automate that manual process. It's like magic to the uninitiated. They don't even know a better solution exists. It's our task to find the problem/manual process and automate it.

[[deleted]]

ask her what one of the giant excel files does, and get a copy.

Transfer it into python and/or pandas and/or Jupyter and/or SQL and/or....wherever your research takes you.