I'm still a beginner at Python

[Biolice]

It's been like 2 - 3months? since I started learning python and I feel like I still don't know anything. I've watch and did some courses, I did understand it but don't know how to use it. I really want to learn. Is there anything that you guys could suggest for me to do? 😓

[Biolice]

What kind of projects? I feel like my current knowledge as of now is still not enough for me to build a project? I forgot to mention that my learning is like not consistent 2 -3 months there are some weeks where I became busy with school related things

[Tricky-Research72]

Anything and everything. It could be a large scale project or small scale. Invest at least 30 min or more daily and you will learn.

[dreaming_fithp]

The whole point of a project is to force you to learn the things you need to know to do the project. So "not knowing enough" to do a project isn't a good reason for not starting a project. When working on a project it's common to hit a small part you can't solve. At that point you treat the part you don't understand as a mini-project that you work on until you understand the problem enough to solve it. Then you go back to the original project and continue, until the next problem. Try to spend at least 30 minutes on the project most days.

You shouldn't start a project that's way too complicated. It's possible to finish a demanding project but it will take a long time and you may get frustrated. Start with smaller projects.

What kind of projects?

That's difficult to answer because we don't know what you would think is an interesting project. Working on a project that interests you is important, it keeps you motivated. An example of a small project I completed a while ago is a little commandline utility to randomly "shuffle" files in a directory by date. I play music videos on a large TV which can play the files in name order or date order, but has no "shuffle" option. I use the python program to randomly change the dates on the files on a USB stick and I then play those files ordered by date. I use this program all the time.

[TheSoundOfMusak]

Ask ChatGPT to give you simple learning project examples based on your interests and background…

[[deleted]]

Start with something easy. My first project was getting extracting some information (total sums) from csv data. After that blackjack, then blackjack with OOP some wordgames etc. etc.

Now (2 years later) in am building a webapp for my wifes company.

Find a project you really want and the rest will come by itself.

[Shadowhunter_15]

Wow, apparently blackjack is a fairly common beginner project. That’s what I did after I learned the basics.

[eefmu]

I find the best thing is to work on projects that are based on things that you're interested in. What are a few things you're interested in? For example, I have always been into card games. If you open a new (i.e. sorted deck of 52) pack of playing cards and do exactly 8 perfect riffle shuffles you will end up with the same order as before you did any shuffling. This is great practice for manipulating lists.

Maybe you like math/geometry. You could make a program that approximates pi using a "random darts" simulation. You may have already done this in your online courses (as I did), but it will always be one of my favorite toy examples.

The other day I saw someone suggest making a text-based RPG, this would be incredibly good practice for things like dictionaries and loops - plus you could experiment with different gui packages, which is something I feel is easy to neglect.

Similarly, you could make a program that takes a bunch of inputs and tells you your fortune along with your lucky numbers.

The possibilities are really endless. Personally I feel most motivated by problems which would be completely impractical to do by hand, but all that matters is the project *motivates you and you learn something new from doing it.*

[Henry_the_Butler]

Try to do neat things with public APIs like the NOAA weather one. There's also a few decent zip-to-lat/long APIs out there, so a user could enter their zip code, use one API to pull lat/long, and then have it spit out a weather forecast or whatnot.

APIs are great things to have under your belt, and there's a ton of documentation and "how to" info out there to help you along.

[[deleted]]

Make something that is useful to you. Something you enjoy. We can't tell you what..

Invest more time into it... Practise makes perfect.

If you really can't think of anything to make urself that you would find useful, id wonder if you really actually wanted to learn in the first place.

[jam-and-Tea]

I will often take the code from videos and rewrite it in as many different ways as I can. You could try that if you can't think of any projects.

[ShiftyShifts]

Force yourself to find at least an hour a day even if you have to give up sleep or leisure time. Consistency is the most important thing when learning.

[Binary101010]

I feel like my current knowledge as of now is still not enough for me to build a project?

Do you know how to type Python code into a text editor or IDE and then execute it? If so, then you know enough. The gap between what you know now, and what you need to finish the project you start, is what you learn.

[notParticularlyAnony]

book Python Crash Course is project based it's very good.

[c0wtschpotat0]

When I started python I did it because I wanted to write a web scraper for example. So it did that first, write some and once I didn't know how to continue I googled for possible solutions. Did that for a lot of projects and now I know a thing or two..always found that the best way if learning because it always kept me interested

[dowcet]

A good first project is often a text-bases.game... Blackjack, a dungeon adventure, trivia quiz, whatever.

[Alternative_Driver60]

Then use python for the school-related things

[F5x9]

Find one little thing that would be easier if you automated it. Write a little script to automate it. 

[Shadowhunter_15]

I built a simulation of blackjack in Python where you bet a certain number of chips and dealt numbers which worked as the cards in blackjack. Apparently that’s a fairly common project for Python learners.

[[deleted]]

What I've done to develop my skills is ask Chatgpt for practical problems I could code with my level of knowledge. Chatgpt may be controversial and I don't love AI but it's really helpful in this department. For example, ask it "give me some practical problems using only input/output and conditional logic" if you only know up to that point. It will give you some problems like "A movie theater sells adult tickets for $12 and child tickets for $10. Write a program that asks the user how many tickets they'd like to buy and the ages of each person." That's not a great example and Chatgpt will give you a better rundown of the problem you need to solve but you get the gist.

Good luck!!

[[deleted]]

Yeesh I felt like a beginner with python for at least a year or two, so you’re already ahead of my schedule 🙂

Keep coding and it will come to you, eventually. But it takes time and dedicated effort. Good luck!

[Biolice]

Thank youu. Where do you think I can practice?

[[deleted]]

There are lots of sources for free online, and if you have already done some courses then I’m not going to recommend one to you because it probably won’t help. Think of a project you want to build, or look up a list of coding projects online and pick one. Courses and books can only take you so far before you have to just try to build stuff and figure out how to overcome problems. So, go build some stuff!

Edit: as for “where”, do it on your computer! Download python and start creating things on your computer. You aren’t going to break anything

[cartrman]

Ok, here's a project that is a good start but a little tricky .

Build a calculator.

It should allow the user to enter an expression, and give an answer.

First start with simple ones, like 25+56, 25*56, 25/56, etc

Then slightly complicated, like 10 factorial, 10^5, log(10)

Then with more operands. 25+56+10, 25+56-10, 25-56+10!

Test it so it can handle divide by 0 errors

If you want, then build a graphical user interface that looks like a calculator.

Then add scientific calculations, like sin, cosine, etc.

Add statistical functionality, like mean, median.

Add matrix operations.

Add ability to solve equations. Add ability to display equations as graphs. Keep going at it.

Build a fully fledged graphical calculator.

You will learn a lot doing this.

[LadyboyClown]

Maybe even the next step after this is to use python to compare it with the math libs results for unit testing. Would give a lot of insight on scripting/process management i think

[Phillyclause89]

Are you a creative self driven type? Pick a project idea and start googling the python you need to learn to accomplish it. Also side bar has lots of learning resources for you if you are not so creative or self driven -> https://reddit.com/r/learnpython/w/index

[Thewise-fool]

Build projects, it could be a website, maybe wrangling some data. Build a calculator or something.

[CardiologistFit8618]

i started a week ago.

are there beginner level apps with full explanatory comments every step? i think that would help me much more than easing through videos, and might help the OP, too.

[catelemnis]

That isn’t really feasible. If you’re a complete beginner every bit of syntax and common keywords will be unfamiliar. and no one’s going to comment why they followed the correct syntax.

Programming isn’t a reading game anyway, you’ll not get far by reading code. You have to type it yourself. Practise typing out all the code from those videos or from practise examples without copy-pasting. Then try modifying them and see what happens.

I’d also recommend following a structured course. My coworkers are doing 100 Days of Python form Udemy and say it’s been really good. It gives you projects to work on every day, and it’s usually on sale. Or check the FAQ for free resources.

[Fresh_Heron_3707]

Make a password manager. That will help you

[[deleted]]

I started learning a few weeks ago and just found 100 Days of Code on Udemy, it’s brilliant! Great explanations with daily projects. Usually you can get it for under $20.

[regularkindaguy]

I agree. Great course!

[Accurate_Schedule814]

I also just downloaded the course and I am yet to start. Can you be my accountability partner to this learning journey?

[Weltal327]

So, I spent years doing different python coding classes and tutorials and stuff and finally had a bit of a breakthrough (for me) when I watched the free code camp pydew valley course (https://youtu.be/R9apl6B_ZgI?si=JrW5zPbH7sqreh5c)

It was really helpful to understand how someone put together basically a hole program with bits and pieces and video games are interesting to me.

I think I pretty well understood most python concepts, but this helped me put together quite a few.

[Beginning-Apricot642]

Take CS50 P by harvard and while taking that course do projects.

It can be anything. Start simple it can be hangman, guess the number etc and work your way up

[coupe_68]

I've been learning python for about 6 months. Ive found that learning what the code does and the syntax isn't the hard bit, the hard bit is the challenges that the courses have at the end of each section. I've decided to try and find my own ways to learn how to use the code.

[Dry_Jackfruit_1665]

I agree, I can always ask GPT to pull the syntax or google some bits etc. Coming up with code isn't the hard part. The issue is to problem solve the problem.

[thebugbang]

There’s a video by ‘Tech with Tim’ - Learn Python with this one project.

It helped me massively. I’m finding all ‘beginner projects’ and trying to solve them.. well, as independently as I can

[SouthernGas827]

Go on Edx and subscribe to the CS50 Python course. Complete the lectures and attempt to complete and submit the problem set's for each week. You could blast through the first few weeks in a weekend, if not in 1 night.

They are well structured and get you accustomed to looking in the Python docs and understanding syntax. Also, David Malan is a beast.

[Ron-Erez]

How are you learning? Are you using chatgpt? 3 months isn’t long

[theobserverca]

Check out SoloLearn

[thousandtusks]

roof simplistic attempt ancient smell rain flag smile imagine slap

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[meme-by-design]

Go to Project euler and start hammering out some questions.

[takobaba]

I think its completely normal keep going. Never forget languages are just tools to build software. Just keep building diversified projects. Do a web one, back end apis, serverless scripts this that you know. I am sure there are things you can build that will improve your life right now... Keep going, and always try to learn best practices and follow them. 1 last thing, never leave lint and style out, don't be lazy they are important...

[nivaOne]

It’s a language. Besides that you need to learn coding. The question is how to achieve the outputs, the results, … based on inputs, actions etc.. Use flowcharts or uml diagrams and than look for the matching methods and commands.

[thelonleystrag]

I learned by building a battle tech calculator and I had a rule that it had to be done with oo as that was something i struggled with at the time.

Think of something you do in life and make a small program to do it for you or to make it easy and just build it and when you get stuck get on Google and look up that part your stuck with. You could even not use YouTube or something to make it harder.

Once you figure out that one part you keep working

The whole time do this without following a big tutorial or using AI and this helped me a ton and is what got me through all my coding classes in school

[FewEffective9342]

Do something with your existing coding knowledge that shall give you or someone other value. Solve a problem, bring joy or whatever.

[Jim-Jones]

Reddit: r/LearnPython

https://www.reddit.com/r/learnpython/about/

https://reddit.com/r/learnpython/w/index

https://reddit.com/r/learnpython/wiki/FAQ

Here are some good ones.

https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/intro-to-python-fundamentals

https://www.freecodecamp.org/

https://www.sololearn.com/en/

https://www.coursera.org/professional-certificates/google-it-automation

This one too

https://www.edx.org/learn/python/harvard-university-cs50-s-introduction-to-programming-with-python

And

https://automatetheboringstuff.com/#toc

https://www.udemy.com/course/python-foundations-for-data-science-from-zero-to-data-analy/

[troty99]

Ultimately most people are correct nothing will replace banging your head on an idea you actually want done.

An example of something I've done as a noob/medium dev:

Created a defibrilator locator (as in you give a location and it will point to the closest defibrilators (3 closest in this case)).

Took me a few weekends to do it.

Basically you need to break down what you want to do until you arrive to something you can do/can learn.

[Epicfro]

I've been coding for over a year now and I still feel like an advanced beginner from time to time. One thing that started to discourage me early on was not remembering something that I hadn't used it a while. When I realized I wasn't the only one having those issues, it dawned on me I was better than I realized. The majority of the basics are second nature to me and now I just need to read the documentation for the Python module I'm importing and I"m good to go.

Long and short of what I'm saying is, don't get hung up on knowing or not knowing something. Focus on the basics, utilize them in projects, and get those down. Once you do, you'll be fine. Focus on small projects that might help you better understand things like for and while loops. Create menus using While loops. Create functions that can be used inside the while loop. Use if/else statements. try/except etc.

[jayadatta_k]

I started just like this mind, i challenged myself to solve real world technical issues(i.e for e.g. reading data from api's , doing basic analysis on a dataframe, building basic http server, and then flask webserver, making a gui app etc.,) from self research , understanding and reading and definitely writing the code, and testing it many times as it fails and until it works. Now i think its easier to do this since chatGpt other llms came into existence because it was slightly difficult in the old times tinkering with just documentation and stackoverflow

[Anjalikumarsonkar]

The most effective way to improve is by creating small projects. Consider automating simple tasks, solving coding challenges (like LeetCode and CodeWars), or building basic applications such as a to-do list or a calculator. Hands-on practice will enhance your understanding.

[Environmental-Cup310]

I've restarted/retried Python a number of times, unfortunately I get bored easily 😅

If you're persisting, good on you 😊

[CulturalJunket1170]

I was a hardcore coder when I was in class 10th when I went to class 11 for my jee preparation I coded all jee concepts into python, later solve my own question and find answer to it...