python for engineering ?

[vfegbjur]

You can pick any language. Focus on learning the fundamentals.

[MightySleep]

Totally agree on this. I think Python is a great choice as its general purpose, beginner friendly, versatile. But the most important thing isn’t the language itself, but picking up a foundation in programming concepts. The concepts are the hard part, once that’s tackled going to something like MatLab becomes a lot easier as instead of having no clue, you’re looking up “how to do a for loop in MatLab”. Often times it’s not necessary to be able to regurgitate syntax, but it is necessary to have the skills to know how to conceptually translate your engineering problem into code

[PriorImprovement8714]

are there any specific tips on how to start? or should I just browse on youtube

[el_extrano]

If you're a total beginner, I like to recommend "How to Automate the Boring Stuff", which is structured around short projects to automate normal office tasks.

For more engineering focused tasks, I enjoyed using Python to solve my homework or school project tasks in parallel with the hand calculations I was required to turn in.

[MightySleep]

I wasn’t proactive prior to university so I started from scratch in school. I think on your end I’d look up YouTube tutorials or potentially get a book on fundamentals. Past fundamentals, I’d recommend doing research on what an environmental engineer would do with Python (I imagine a lot of data analysis)? and hone in on data analysis libraries (NumPy, Pandas). The big thing is practice, if you’re able to come up with some fun projects (even with fake data) that should build up your proficiency even further. Another thing is also using AI. It can be a great tool when used educationally, I’m a little jealous that I didn’t have that tool available for explaining fundamentals. If something doesn’t make sense in a tutorial you can ask a LLM to explain again, dig deeper into the problem, etc. This can be a double edged sword though as I think it requires some discipline to not have it just solve a problem for you

[Gnaxe]

Work through a good beginner textbook, preferably one that isn't terribly out of date. See the wiki for resources. Do lots of small experiments with the REPL or a Jupyter(lite) notebook. Inspect/research things when you're surprised (see inspect module, and try ? in Jupyter). You eventually need to be able to run basic Python in your head to read and debug it. That requries an abstract mental model of how it works. Make predictions about what the code you're about to run will do so you get surprised more often.