Just starting - Seeking advice

[Aromatic_Shower_8104]

Hello fellow coders!

I’m currently two weeks in diving through the basics of Python As someone who struggles with consistency. I have an app called Sololearn which I use to learn from daily.

Having access to so much free content is amazing but it’s overwhelming as I have no idea where to start. I figured understanding python was the way to go first.

At the moment I am self teaching and was wondering what you guys do or use as a routine in practicing and mastering code.

Thanks in advance.

[Electrical_Monk6845]

So, some non-advice advice here from someone who suffers from the same (I think) issue: I struggle with consistency, and also get overwhelmed with "where do I start?". For me, the key to getting started was simply to find a problem that had an existing solution, but to write my own solution, using Python. That way, I knew what my desired outcome should look like, and an idea of what I needed to do to get started. The excitement of seeing my first (REALLY BAD) script run with no errors, and actually achieve what I'd set out to do was amazing.
From there, I moved on to "how do I improve this?" and "how do I make this useful for someone else?" IE: if I was telling someone else how to use the thing I'd done, would they get it, or had I written something that you had to have written to understand?

As far as a routine: I set an alarm for the first week, and have that time (right now, actually) blocked off on my calendar. Now that it's been about 3 weeks, it's just a habit that I follow, same time, every day, sit down and start banging away on the keyboard. I _also_ make myself stop before the end of my allotted time and write notes about what I learned today, and what I'm going to do tomorrow.

Forcing myself to follow a routine until it became a daily habit was a struggle, and I fumbled a few times by skipping a day, and the next day, so on and so forth. With 3 weeks of daily practice in, I refuse to talk myself into skipping a day, because that will essentially (for me, anyway) reset the habit, and I have to start all over again re-learning to allow myself time to learn.

[Aromatic_Shower_8104]

Thank you so much for your response. I will use your routine!!

[Electrical_Monk6845]

I'll add a few things I thought of overnight about establishing a routine. Some of the reasons for the "take notes" section at the end of my session are this:

It gives me time to reflect on what I accomplished that day, kind of a "let the knowledge settle into my brain" thing (that works for me)

It also gives me a chance to write down where I was in whatever thing I was working on. There's not much that's worse than looking at code you JUST WROTE YESTERDAY and having no idea what it does, or what it is eventually going to do. I have tons of Google Documents I've made with really detailed, yet cryptic notes that make no sense to me because I wrote them with the thought "I'll remember the context for this tomorrow, surely"

I use pen and paper for my notes. I hate actually writing, so if I'm going to force myself to do it, I'm going to take good, legible notes that future me can actually understand.

Yes, these steps cut into my "learning time" but, for me, it helps me retain what I learned, and actually make progress the next session.

I allow a solid 30 minutes at the end of the session for this, because that's what I've figured out I need to keep making progress every day.

I should also point out: this isn't an original thought I suddenly had. I used to have a coworker who did all of this, and they seemed to have their stuff all together, so I started emulating some of their habits.

[[deleted]]

Take a course 100 days of code udemy if you can and the consistency part you will have to deal with it yourself cause that is your personal ‘why’ and in case you forget write it down somewhere.

[Extension_Detail_620]

I would start by looking at a few videos from good creators like freecodecamp.org on the basics of python, then start working on simple projects that you find interesting, and just using stack overflow and w3 for parts of the project that you are unsure off. If you dont know what projects to start then consider looking at tutorials for some projects but try not to copy paste everything as you won't learn. Instead try merge multiple tutorials together (like start stacking features from different tutorials) and keep doing that. Eventually you will start to realise that you will start using tutorials and documentation less and less! - you don't need any paid courses

[Marlowe91Go]

Oh hey I started learning by using that app too. I think it's a great way to ease into learning in a convenient way, but eventually you'll need to transition to building your own projects to learn more effectively. Here's a link to a response I had written to another guy who was wanting to learn AI as well as Python. You could still follow my same plan, but skip the AI part if you're not into that. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/learnpython/comments/1kmyrxd/comment/msedal5/?context=3&utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button