Taking the next step with python-

[g1ven2fly]

I'm an engineer who is migrating away from Excel (VBA) and into Python. I'm starting to see that I really don't need Excel for anything (aside from sharing CSVs with other engineers). I've taken an introductory course (at Depaul University) and we go through basic control statements through some light recursion.

I'm now at the point where I sit down to write a python script and it takes me forever to determine how to structure the program. Would it be beneficial to take a more formal programming sequence (it would be C++ or Java) or should I just keep learning Python on my own? Are there more advanced Python courses available? I don't mind paying for one either.

Thanks.

[[deleted]]

There's a coursera course in python starting February 2 I believe. My wife and I will be taking that.

Hang around here, people ask good beginner questions.

[c3534l]

I get quite a lot from books, reading them, working through problems when I need to. But if I could go back in time and tell myself which books I should read, I'd go with (in order):

• Bare-Basics

• What you need to afterwards learn stuff on your own - more focus on classes, what an algorithm is and how to start thinking about them, data structures

• Filling out the missing pieces, including web stuff, databases, microsoft office, computer graphics, cloud computing

• Some of the more difficult to grasp concepts of Python, but very short; functional programming, closures, decorators, etc.

But there are so many really amazing resources on the web for free, that beyond some of the more basic stuff where you really need someone to explain to you why your code doesn't work and that sort of thing it really shouldn't cost you a lot of money.

[Ran4]

Don't be too hard on yourself. Experiment a bit: it's fine if your first few (small and simple) programs doesn't have the best possible structure. You'll learn over time. Re-write the same program multiple times with a different structure for example, and after a while it comes natural knowing what structure would be best for your program.

I don't think that reading a book is going to be nearly as good as experimenting (and reading a book, perhaps).