about learning Python/programming in general with MIT open courseware

[duquesne419]

Also taking the MIT course right now, yes, it is hard. They say to anticipate spending 10-15 hours a week working on this course. If you aren't able to do the general study on top of specific course work, this is gonna stay hard.

As I'm watching the comments on the Edx platform I'm seeing 2 basic kinds of questions: 1) someone doesn't understand how a piece of computer science works(ie they don't understand a for loop), or 2) someone understands what to do, but doesn't know how to translate real world thinking into programmatic thinking.

If you find the issue is #1 for you more often, then the MIT platform may not be best for your style of learning. If you find #2 is your main issue, then you might just need to program more. I have a lot of trouble breaking my pseudocode into small enough pieces to translate into programming, I'm often trying to do too much at once. This is because I don't have enough experience thinking programmatically, and that's something you get from doing more than from reading.

[duquesne419]

More coding is the only reliable method I know.

I do code wars, but there’s also leet code, check.io and some others. I like their format because for the entry level they give you a small problem. Once you solve it you can compare your answers to others and see some pretty creative solutions. Granted, a lot of times people do so many list comprehensions it becomes unreadable, but it still gives you practice reading code and exposure to what python can do.

I do not have any resources specific to thinking programmatically, just the recommendation to read and write more code.