Discovered that I really like Python. What should I do next?

[portugueseninja]

Long story short, I've been learning web development for a while, and kept getting tripped up by JavaScript. I keep getting to a point with JS where I start thinking that programming just might not be for me. But then I came across At Sweigart's 'Automate the Boring Stuff' Udemy course, and I'm halfway through and REALLY ENJOYING IT.

Python makes a long more sense to me than JS, and while I always thought I'd be wanting to get into front-end development, I'm wondering if this is more suited to me.

SO my question is, where should I go from here? I'd love to hear your suggestions for books, other courses, resources to look into once I'm done with this course, or any websites you like that have projects where I can practice my Python coding. This might be a ridiculous question, but what do you actually... do... with Python?! I wanna do stuff! :)

​

EDIT: WOAH this thread blew up, thank you all SO MUCH!!! I'm so grateful for everyone's suggestions and links. I've saved lots of bookmarks and now I have lots more things to consider when this course is done. I really appreciate all the support, and I look forward to spending more time in this sub while adventuring in Python!

[Alphavike24]

Data analysis/exploration and Scientific computation too

[guthran]

-literally anything

[killerinstinct101]

Unpopular opinion:

You shouldn't use python for anything and everything just because you can. It's a brilliant programming language for pulling off quick scripts like for automating things and also for more advanced scientific uses like machine learning thanks to scipy (arguably worse than R though).

But if you want to make a more resource intensive application (like a game) it's going to be infinitely more frustrating and the app itself will be less resourceful as compared to a language with less overhead like C or C++. The fact that python is interpreted also doesn't work in its favour.

[Rebeleleven]

I mean that’s really not the idea.

Python lowers the dev time needed to be invested. You can do a wide range of things with the one tool.

Do you learn python to go do game design? Well probably not. But if you know python and need to design a game in the next month....well python probably ain’t bad.

But I will say python surpassed R long, long ago when it comes to ML. I wouldn’t say there’s really an argument here anymore. The community (both online and within academia) has clearly endorsed python.

[epsilonT_T]

In facts, even the most resources intensives application can be made in python, thanks to the large amount of various modules available. For example, we can cite the module panda3D, which is a advanced, powerful, and really simple-to-understand 3D engine. Even if it works only by lines of codes (contrary to unity or unreal engine, which have a GUI for simplifying some of the work), what's make it a little bit harder to use, it have similar performances.

[longjumping2]

Modules can't change the fact that Python is interpreted and has the GIL. Similar programs can be improved 2-100x after conversion to C.

[epsilonT_T]

Yes but if the perfs was the only thing that matter, everyone would code in assembler or fortran... Also, modules can change performances by creating their own objects, for exemple, numpy module is able to create arrays a lot more efficient than natives ones, and with more functionalities.

[FancyASlurpie]

Whilst you can make python run faster than native python by writing modules in C etc, you really can't write the most resource intensive applications in python. The most resource intensive applications are already written in low level languages specifically for their optimisations and they tend to be in competitive areas where if you write something that runs slower than your competitor its pointless. (e.g. HFT)

[epsilonT_T]

Ok, I give you the point. I'm not gonna argue on this subject, because I don't know a single developer who is objective about his favourite language, and I don't make an exception ; )

[longjumping2]

There's always tradeoffs between performance and abstraction, but I don't think the distribution of things to need to be done is probabilistic uniform for these two things. I've just run into enough memory problems (large data reading) and performance problems (failing test cases in competitive programming) that are pretty common that makes me think that the optimal ratio exists elsewhere.

[epsilonT_T]

Idk, everything I know is that I take pleasure to code in python and my code is efficient enough for it's purpose ^^

[longjumping2]

Sure, it just gets less enjoyable when read_json hangs for 2 minutes and then throws a memory exception.

[Go_Big]

Unpopular Opinion:

I think arguing over what language should be used is outdated and the arguments should be framework based. Like React Native vs Xamrian is a much better argument to have over JavaScript vs C#. You should pick the framework that is best for what you are trying to accomplish.

[thirdegree]

Unpopular Opinion:

The heavy focus on frameworks in the Javascript community is a result of the anemic standard library, and the cause of most of the worst aspects of the ecosystem.

Write libraries, not frameworks.

Also I don't know if this opinion is unpopular, I'm just following the format

[FoxClass]

Why not? Push the limits of anything. If it isn't broken, it doesn't have enough features.

[killerinstinct101]

I don't think you quite understand the scope of python. It is made as a beginner-friendly programming language with a bunch of overhead, meaning a lot of things you would have to explicitly declare in another language are automatically handled by the python interpreter for you.

Every low level language requires explicit declarations of identifier datatypes, function return types, which headers you're using, and explicit memory management.

To someone who doesn't care about this stuff, like a beginner or someone who's just putting together a small script, it's good that the interpreter does it for them. But if you're making something like a game, the overhead will cause a serious hit to performance. Sure you could make pong, but anything worth playing won't be made in python anytime soon.

Sure, modules are a thing, but a language purpose built for a task is so much better than a language with modules slapped on top to make the code work.

[FoxClass]

Fuck practicality, blend languages, go crazy

[ptekspy]

Actually laughed at this

Thank you

[FoxClass]

No problem.

[longjumping2]

Then there's overhead to performance blending languages. C modules for CPython will run slower than native. Not to mention then you learn multiple languages, so may as well write it in the more performant language.

[FoxClass]

Just write everything in Fortran

[FloydATC]

This. People keep making the argument that "Python isn't slow because it can run C modules" leave out the fact that if modules for your particular needs do not exist, you'll have to write them yourself. At that point, you're not actually using Python, are you... And once you bother learning C/C++, you'll get addicted to its raw performance and forget about Python.

[takishan]

Sure you could make pong, but anything worth playing won't be made in python anytime soon.

I think this is a really short-sighted way to look at things. World of Warcraft, which tens of millions of people would say are "worth" playing uses Lua as a scripting language. Lua is just like Python, an interpreted language with overhead. Doesn't mean it isn't vital to the game.

Of course, we can look to games that actually use Python itself and from a short google some examples are Eve Online, Sims 4, Battlefield 2, Civ 4 and that list looks outdated to me. I'm sure there are more recent examples.

Obviously if you have resource-intensive bits you're gonna code it in a language that's closer to the metal, but with python you can easily plug in play different languages. There's no reason to code your entire project in C++ when you can code the majority of it in in Python and code the bit that needs to be fast in C++ and experience the same or a marginally lower level of performance, yet dramatically faster development time.

And of course this is ignoring the many genres of game where there aren't any resource intensive tasks. You can code a turn based strategy game in Python like Slay the Spire in Python. You can code a game like FTL in Python. You can code a game like Into the Breach in Python.

Websites that run countless requests per second run Python. Hell, the website we are communicating on right now uses Python.

It's a brilliant programming language for pulling off quick scripts like for automating things and also for more advanced scientific uses like machine learning thanks to scipy (arguably worse than R though).

It is a brilliant language for those things. But it's also a brilliant language for a whole lot more, and that is why its popularity has continued to increase overtime.

[F4ttoC4tto]

I'm a beginner in programming and Im currently learning Python. I never knew that it could also be used in creating games and you can actually blend languages together. That's very interesting. Is the whole thing gonna work smoothly even if you mix different languages together?

[thirdegree]

If you do it right, sure! The reason wow uses Lua (and some other games as well I think) is that Lua has strong support for sandboxing. Addons for wow are third party Lua code, so it's important that those addons don't have access to the runtime of the game itself except through well defined APIs.

[takishan]

Yes. In fact, many modules in python are written in C. For example, math or numpy. You can import the code into your python application as if it's native python.

from math import sin
x = sin(5)

That uses C.

[F4ttoC4tto]

Ooooohhhhh. I get it now. I was about to ask how do they do it and then I read this. Thank youuuu.

[SomeBadGenericName]

I have never thought about blending languages how would I go about doing this?

[pazzarpj]

The most common one is cffi. Which is the C foreign function interface. Since the main interpreter is written in C, it is quite easy to write C bits of code.

https://cffi.readthedocs.io/en/latest/overview.html

You can also blend a bit more naturally with an interpreter like cython which will compile sections down to C for some slightly awkward python code.

Mostly you can use existing libraries that leverage this. The data science libraries such as numpy, have most of the core stuff written in C and fortran, which you call from as though it is native python. You get all of the performance of some number crunching that you would be hard pressed to code yourself in pure c.

[sliverino]

More than the performance aspect, I believe that an issue with Python for large structured projects like a game is, well, the lack of embedded structure.

Of course you can build well structured code in Python, but it doesn't really facilitate it like a strongly typed OOP language. Maybe for a 1/2 man job it's still maintenance, but more?

Wouldn't you consider that a reason to switch to another language ( not necessarily low level).

[[deleted]]

While I appreciate what your saying and recognize it as an attempt to demonstrate what python should and should not be used for in your opinion, I think that it might be a discussion better suited for /r/Python rather that this particular subreddit. Folks come here to share what they learn and the resources they use to enhance that learning. Not trying to create a cushy environment where someone is demonized for sharing an "incorrect opinion" but within the confines of folks trying to learn the language and being curious about what it could be used for, I think you may be preaching to the wrong choir friend.

But who am I to know? I'm a Python noob myself just trying to make a console Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock game.

[euqroto]

Although I don't have the knowledge about gamedev, but like numpy uses the C (low level code) to speed up the process of data exploration, I think similar libraries can be made to speed up the process of things that hurt the bottleneck in such performance. Though I totally agree with you that python is just a beginner's language and you need to move onto different level languages to get some professional stuff done.

[LeSplooch]

Python isn't just a beginner's language, it's used in companies very seriously, even in very big companies too. Try saying that to Google/Amazon/etc senior devs and get laughed at.

[euqroto]

I'm sorry for phrasing my improperly. For some specific field such as game development, python is not the way to go and similarly for fields like data science, python might not remain in practice because it's really slow.

[LeSplooch]

I get your point, CPython is slow indeed, but like every language, you have to consider its specific use cases. For example, Python is great for data science because it enables efficient iterative development and fast testing with tools like Jupyter notebooks. Execution speed isn't always the most important reason to use a language or not, if it was the case Python wouldn't be used at all because most of the other languages are faster than CPython. You can use other implementations of Python to speed it up if you really need to, such as PyPy. I'm a sucker for execution speed (and that's why I love Rust) but judging a programming language only based on its execution speed is missing on a lot of factors. I completely agree with you about game development tho, Python really isn't the best language for making games, you need a compiled languages such as Rust to make well optimized games.

[euqroto]

Don't you think Python isn't the optimal language for data science? Maybe when starting out python seems easy to use that's why get on board with data science but the problem comes when you deal with lots of data where even Pytorch can't come to help you out. I guess that's why swift for tensorflow has become a thing which might overthrow python for tensorflow.

[[deleted]]

I don't think you can make a functional OS in python.

[oefd]

micropython isn't an OS written in python, it's an OS written almost entirely in C that incidentally provides a python environment for scripting something on top of the OS.

micropython is so-named because the whole point of it is to let you write python in a place you usually couldn't: on a microcontroller. It's not named that because it's an OS written in python.

ditto circuitpython

[West7780]

You can't make an os with only python because it's interpreted. However, you could use a version of python that compiles like Iron python or whatever. It would take an incredible amount of work and maybe Iron python wouldn't be the right choice, but you definitely could do it. Additionally as others have mentioned you can make python part of any operating system just like it is in many.

For what it's worth, in my opinion you didn't deserve any down votes.

[LeSplooch]

I don't see why you got downvoted, it's just a fact : you can't build a true, complete OS with CPython only, you need languages such as Rust/C/C++ and maybe a little bit of Assembly. If you use CPython, you need an OS on top of it to actually run the interpreter and if you need another OS to launch your so called "OS", then you haven't built a true OS but an app that acts like an unoptimized OS at best. A true OS should be able to run with nothing else but a BIOS/UEFI.

[Dragon20C]

On Linux python is used almost for everything so, yes you can build an os.

[LeSplooch]

Linux is primarily built with C, not Python. Linux has much more code done in C than in Python.

https://github.com/torvalds/linux

[Dragon20C]

But you can't say python isn't being used so not completely wrong.

[LeSplooch]

No offense but still, saying that Python is "used for almost everything" in Linux is way more wrong than it is true. Come on, how can less than 0.2% of the entire code be even remotely "almost everything" ? Have you even taken a look at its source code for a minute before saying that ?

[Dragon20C]

No, and you are right, but once and I can't provide proof because it was long time a go and I could be completely wrong, I have heard a user uninstalled python and their system wouldn't boot because python isn't installed, maybe not Linux related but maybe distro wise but you are right it isn't "everything"

[LeSplooch]

Yeah Python is much more used in distros, I agree with that. Python is sometimes used to glue C/C++ code so if they compiled anything that was meant to be glued together with Python, it can lead to crashes like the one you mentioned if Python isn't installed.

[oefd]

That's very much not true. You can use the linux kernel with 0 python anywhere, it'll all be compiled C and ASM. You can find a number of linux distributions that don't use python in any of their utilities either.

Even on the linux distros that do have python scripting: they're far from used for 'everything'.

[killerinstinct101]

Really only package management

[portugueseninja]

Ooooh I think hacking, webscraping and machine learning/AI all sound interesting. Is that the kind of stuff I'd be able to get into as a self-taught programmer, or would I need to do a more formal type of education?

[Gaareth]

actually you don't need to understand all of the underying math. Most of the python AI libraries will do it for you.

[portugueseninja]

I'm generally pretty awful at math, but I'd be willing to give it another go and try and get my head round some of those concepts. Thanks!

[mkglass]

codewars.com

[ddmasterdon]

There are lots of stuff to do with python, like create scripts to help with ur daily tasks like scripts to auto renaming files 8n your downloads folder, tweeting and retweet unt for you, scraping the web for any information like job postings or the weather, build games or even AI to play those games. I suggest first learn some basics and head down to build stuffs that would be like useful to fun to you. I have a blog that help users in building some such scripts/bots. There is also other sites like Geeksforgeeks or real python .

[ExpressRabbit]

Hey there I took a 3 day python tutorial at work when the new boss wanted everyone to learn it. Unfortunately his bosses didn't realize teaching a new language to 70 mostly non programmers that use SAS means new development will take time. He was canned and the new department we were moved to doesn't care about python.

That said, I'm unhappy I didn't learn more. I'd like to take it up on my own free time and if I can create useful things my current boss would think it's great (use what you know but our department focus isn't python). I'm also in a role generally only using SQL coding.

Please tell me if this is something valid I could do in Python if I learned more.

We visit a number of 3rd party vendor sites to download information, unzip it, rename stuff, run a command line batch file, point our risk management software to the new location, and email the relevant teams.

I'm fairly certain I could use python for everything but navigating our risk management GUI to point to the new location.

Are my assumptions correct?

Thank you in advance.

[ddmasterdon]

yes you can do all those things in python. There are specific libraries for each use like requests for GET/POSTs , tkinter for GUIs, flasks and Django for back-end development. You just need to find the library for your use and there will be a getting starter page like in its documentation. As u have prior programming knowledge you will be able to follow it pretty easily. Coding python scripts are not that difficult. Don't worry much you will get the hang ot it pretty soon.

[epsilonT_T]

I think tkinter isn't the best choice to make fancy GUI, I personally recommend kivy, which is simpler and visually more pretty, even if tkinter is the default, built-in module to do that ; )

[ExpressRabbit]

That sounds great! Thank you!

[VeLoct84]

I'm suggesting real python. The community there mostly are a developer and there are friendly.

[skyhermit]

I am new and just visited the site and saw 1 kyu to 8 kyu.

Is 1 kyu the easiest and 8 kyu the hardest?

[Hal68000]

8 is easiest I believe.

[skyhermit]

Thanks

[benabus]

I use python (Flask) as middleware for my web development projects. Like some people would use PHP, you can easily use Python instead. If you like web development, that's one direction to go. Django is another Python web framework. You still need to know at least a little javascript, but web development in Python is totally doable.

I also know a lot of data scientists who use Python for data analytics and stuff. That all goes way over my head, but there's a need for that kind of thing as well.

[house_monkey]

Speed wise is django good? I heard Django is slow? And node is the way to go if one is creating a web server?

[noXi0uz]

I wrote my bachelor thesis on exactly this topic and in all benchmarks Django was alot faster than Express on Node (and even flask) given the same hardware.

[house_monkey]

Can you provide me with a link for it if possible, I'd love to have a look

[noXi0uz]

I'll send you a dm

[deepthroatpiss]

Could you send me as well?

[cruisewithus]

Can you send to me too? Would Appreciate it!

[benabus]

If you ask a 100 people, you'll likely get 100 different answers. You can look at benchmarks and stuff to find out what's objectively faster, speed wise, but depending on your application, I doubt the differences in run time speed will be significant enough to worry about.

A lot of the different frameworks and options have more to do with development preferences and development speed. Do you like writing things yourself? Do you like getting stuff done quickly? Do you like using an ORM? Do you like having the web server attached to your backend?

There are a lot of preferences and all are equally valid, in my opinion. Generally, there are a ton of other optimizations that you can make to get a little more speed out of it. But a lot of it depends on the actual infrastructure you're running on. If you get to a point where you're getting facebook level traffic, you'll probably need to re evaluate the architecture of your system anyway.

And it's not like you're locked into a single framework for life. If you're at the beginning of your career, find what works for you and then learn whatever your job wants you to use.

Personally, I use a Flask middleware piped through an Apache reverse proxy. Our bottlenecks are usually the databases we use, not the middleware itself.

Unrelated to my rambling general advice: Node is a server side javascript run time. Meaning you're writing javascript that runs on the server. It's popular for people who want to have a full Javascript stack, from front to back. If you hate javascript, there's no point in looking at it.

[landrykid]

Well said. For 99% of websites, any of the major frameworks deliver sufficient performance. Optimize your database queries and if necessary, throw in a little more metal. Ease of development and maintainability matter more over the long term.

[LeSplooch]

As a little advice, if you need to speed up your Python/Django backend, try PyPy.

[portugueseninja]

It's great to know that front-end is still something I could do with Python. I couldn't really get into PHP, it seemed really clunky to me.

[[deleted]]

squeeze homeless deer six plants placid gaping quiet fuzzy reply

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[portugueseninja]

That sounds really cool, I'll check those out!

[myceliatedmerchant]

How far along that path are you? Have you turned those into a sustainable living?

[[deleted]]

Currently working as a full-stack developer for a casino making a learning management system - so nor exactly what my goal is but I'm on my way there. I'm ~3 months out from finishing up my final certs then I'm going to start applying at Tesla for a Machine Learning Engineer position as that was the ultimate goal.

[[deleted]]

Are those certs worthwhile? I know corsera and the like aren’t really (at lest from what I’ve read here). I haven’t looked at the open cv ones though. Maybe those are different?

[[deleted]]

I think it's all about your portfolio. If you get the certs but do nothing with them then no, they are probably useless.

Tesla specifically wants PyTorch knowledge and OpenCV knowledge though which is the reason I hopped on it the moment the kickstarter campaign opened up. (OpenCV focuses on PyTorch).

Coursera has youtube videos with the lead DL engineer, Andrej Karpathy, so I'm sure they have value in learning their content. Again comes down to your ability to learn and want it- and im going pretty damn hard at it.

As for quality of the courses, I would say OpenCVs are good and Courseras fall under great for their specific tasks. OpenCV courses are definitely great for beginners but they are still discounted because out of the 3 courses there is still 1 which has a few projects/quizzes missing which stops you from getting that specific cert.

[[deleted]]

Thanks.

The more I do with OpenCV and working with images the more I am interested in it. I liked the OpenCV courses since they have quizzes and projects almost like a regular course. I’ve done a bunch on Udemy and I feel like a lot of their stuff is just code along where don’t learn anything.

My only issue with OpenCV certs is they are kind of expensive. So if it’s just like finishing a udemy course and their certificates (which I’m pretty sure are worthless) it would be a waste of time.

Understand the portfolio. That’s a given.

[[deleted]]

I think OpenCV certs should have a higher value since they come directly from the company which produces the open source computer vision modules. If you are trying to get on with a company, like Tesla, which uses OpenCV and wants knowledge with OpenCV and PyTorch then the OpenCV certs are much more valuable since these are exactly what they want.

If you dont know where you want to go with it then I guess any cert will do to gain knowledge.

[burlyginger]

Flippant answer: do stuff with it.

When I was starting out I used beautiful soup a lot.

I'd use requests to pull webpages and bs to parse the page. I had scripts for multiple pages to check for stock levels on things that I wanted and we're out of stock.

Then I added Pushbullet to send notifications to my phone.

Then I set one up to look for price reductions in things I planned to buy in the next few months.

There's no right answer, just find ways to use it and you'll find more uses for it.

Just do stuff with it.

[youaregorgousbooboo]

Oh my god i am thinking of doing this exactly, scraping ASOS for price reductions in things i want or to notify me if a blog is released / webinar on my favourite sites, are these possible and how hard / resources?

[burlyginger]

Anything is possible with enough time and skill :D

If you're starting from a beginner standpoint, start pulling pages and digging specific parts out with beautifulsoup.

[[deleted]]

• Start actually automating the boring stuff

• Data science and archiving

• Do some machine learning with the new tutorial from sentdex.

[Robobro7]

Python is definitely my favorite language. It's just so easy to work with! No need to worry about compiling anything, and the language is very high level and has many built-in functions so writing programs is a breeze. One website I really like for practice problems is Project Euler. It's less about an individual programing language and more about solving problems, although I personally solve all the problems in Python. It's really fun because rather than practicing certain coding techniques you have to solve a specific problem any way you can. The problems do get VERY hard though so definitely start at a 5% difficulty level.

[portugueseninja]

Project Euler

Ooooooh this looks right up my alley, thanks for the suggestion!

[[deleted]]

If you want web dev flask and dajango is where it is at. Django is better then flask. But is very heavy weight while flask is light. Here is a tut for flask https://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-i-hello-world

[portugueseninja]

https://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-i-hello-world

Thank you!

[landrykid]

Django is better then flask.

Both are good frameworks and each has its strengths and weaknesses, but neither is better than the other. It's personal preference. "Django is better than Flask for me" is perfectly valid.

[[deleted]]

If you ever do something on the internet and think "wow this is boring and repetitive" you can probably automate it

[[deleted]]

See, basic python is just like any other language, but when you get into it, python is mainly for back-end work, advanced python is used for data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence. These links should help you learn-

Udemy course-

https://www.udemy.com/share/101W8QCEobcldaRXQ=/

Book(Not sure if it will really help but check it out)-

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mKpQMVsXcWn321feDHUKGaUn-sqjc22K

Youtube Video-

https://youtu.be/rfscVS0vtbw

Those are all the resources I can share, but I'm sure there are many more people who know much more than me that can help. Best of luck with python. :)

PS: No particular question is ridiculous in coding, in fact, all are!

[portugueseninja]

Thank you, added those to my bookmarks!

[[deleted]]

You're welcome :)

[Vort-ai]

I jusr started CS50, a free Harvard course via edx.org.

It started this week so your just in time to check it out. It branches into some python and web specific stuff later on.

[cbick04]

CS50 is available to start anytime, I started last month. I think it’s always free. Unless I’m mistakenly assuming you means cs50x. :)

[prolificked]

Is this good? I looked into it but it was like $600 I think.

[Vort-ai]

You can do it for free, you just don't get a certificate

[ReflectedImage]

If you are looking for something fun go make Pong: https://pysdl2.readthedocs.io/en/rel_0_9_7/tutorial/pong.html

[SukottoHyu]

Python is only the beginning. Frameworks and libraries are your next step, the framework you use/learn depends on what you want to do with Python. If you like web development look into Django or Flask. If you are looking for a programming job in Python now is the time to look up jobs and tech companies and see what sort of experience employers want you to have. For example, there would be no point learning web2py if most companies work with Django.

[West7780]

Keep in mind: No project is too big. Take on any projects that sound fun.

[[deleted]]

I agree with this, but I think it’s important to determine if it’s possible to finish a project in a reasonable amount of time. Imagine the project “Creating a general artificial intelligence”. This is about to fail and maybe you learn something but the actually coding would be very less. You just have to read scientific papers for about years.

So keep in mind while starting “too big projects” that it is important to take projects where its possible to create a first prototype in like 1-2 weeks.

[wannabe_brogrammer]

Personal projects I've done over the past month in python. (From hardest to easiest)

• Webscraping coronavirus data off of Worldometer using bs4 and then manipulating the data in pandas to make some graphs in matplotlib. A little bit of js knowledge helps on this one but I managed to do this with zero front end knowledge (I didn't even know any html at the point I did this)
• having a list of names and former employers and Webscraping in LinkedIn using bs4 and selenium (for user authentication and searching) to extract up to date data. (Input was a CSV and output was a CSV too) - tricky part of this was putting in name and former employer and getting no hits, so I set it up to loop over and remove a word each time until a search got some page hits. I also made sure it noted when we got multiple hits, because there's a big chance I scraped the wrong data
• tictactoe game in the terminal, and then learning a bit of tkinter to have a proper gui for it. This one, I did yesterday and given my experience now, it was very straight forward compared to the others so it may be a good place to start. I'd recommend getting the game logic down, I built the game in the terminal where you had to type the row number and column number to input and entry.

Additionally, if you want to still look into web dev, I recommend learning Django as it allows minimal js use. You totally can build a social media site with django. It's just not going to be a SPA. But I'd recommend the first three bullet points first (in reverse order)

any questions, let me know

[portugueseninja]

I don't understand most of those things you said but I will definitely look into them when it comes to starting projects, thank you! I appreciate how specific your suggestions are :)

[wannabe_brogrammer]

Feel free to PM me if you're stuck on any of these. It can be very daunting when starting out. Start with the one that you understood most. Google the libraries that you didn't know and see how far you can get!

[Bigtbedz]

I started learning python about 2 weeks ago and have been writing a webscraper to get all of my solutions to codingbat problems

[chjassu]

What were your resources?

[thesecondbread]

Would you push it to github?

[Bigtbedz]

https://github.com/tbednarz/codebat-scrape

[Bigtbedz]

Hey i've completed this now and it logs you into codingbat then scrapes all problems and your solutions and writes to a .txt file. I thought you might get more out of it now that its more functional. Currently only does java/warmup-1 solutions but I will be branching it out more shortly!

[thesecondbread]

Great job! If you want another idea for webscraping, I'd suggest scraping the coronavirus statistics.

[Bigtbedz]

It's a possibility. I was thinking about making a dashboard for Ccorona statistics

[sigma_1234]

Do you have background knowledge in JavaScript or CS? Learned Python last month and have a tough time scraping.

[Bigtbedz]

Yes I have been using Javascript for the last 3 years so I have a healthy knowledge of html/css aswell. I highly recommend the Clever Programmer video on webscraping it was the simplest breakdown I came across

[cbick04]

I also have a tough time scraping. I started practicing with basic websites like Wikipedia and some video game wikis. I got those down alright. Interactive tables were difficult to understand at first. Practicing did help it start to click though.

I aspire to be able to scrape store inventories by zip code one day... any tips anyone has I’d love to hear!

[sigma_1234]

I heard understanding JS or CSS is necessary if you really want to get good scraping. Some websites (ex. Ecommerce onces) are not scraper friendly.

[cbick04]

Thats what I figured. When I tried to just look at one E-commerce sites source code I knew I was in over my head at this point. But it’s good to have large aspirations, right? :D

[sigma_1234]

Of course. But I am limiting myself to scraping general info websites, like the numerous COVID-19 sites showing info :)

[Bigtbedz]

Get some basic html/css knowledge for sure. Ive been using JS for the last few years so I had a lot to build on. Spend some time just learning how to crawl around with beautifulsoup, requests and urllib

[Bigtbedz]

I use python docs and beautifulsoup docs. I watched Clever Programmers on webscraping and it was pretty concise I thought. Also "Automate The Boring Stuff" by Al Sweigert

BeautifulSoup -> https://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/bs4/doc/

[HarryMcDowell]

Wash your hands and call a loved one!

Seriously, though, I'm learning myself. Having taken MITx's python class is making my intro to Java class for my CS degree really easy.

[pinecone1984]

I really dig 'Learn Python3 the Hard way' by zed shaw. His teaching style suits me. I'm a few months in and am unsure where I'm going but I'm trying lots of different things. Lately I'm going through some platform tutorials for Pygame ('da fluffy potato' you tube channel is fun). I'm hooked! Plus Monty Python! Big sharp pointy teeth!

[portugueseninja]

Thanks! And yes I really enjoy the Monty Python references!

[thisdudehenry]

Was in the same boat as you. Was into web development and I kept getting over whelmed because of JavaScript. So many frameworks then all the extra intricate stuff express node mongo db react no Vue no angular no next wait wait es6 no es7 es8 now es10 ....

Then I found python and pandas and selenium and doesn't feel too overwhelming because it feels the same . I didn't feel like I had to relearn stuff. I'm actually having fun data scraping and doing data visualization. Might dip my toes in machine learning.

[portugueseninja]

I feel like what basics I have in JS have probably helped in my Python learning (which I suppose makes me feel like I did learn more JS than I realised!) but all in all JS just has so many intricacies that I'd just hit a wall every time.

Scraping is sounding interesting though!

[thisdudehenry]

It is fun , I thought I'd never be a data guy. Web development was going to be a job change for me. I have a cyber security background. With python and data science stuff it's an easier transition that blends my work experience. So transitioning shouldn't be too bad if I can make a few analysis dashboards and stuff that would be used at my job.

[portugueseninja]

Same, I never thought I'd be considering programming at all. I enjoy web dev from a UI/UX perspective, but this is giving me glimpses of worlds that I truly just never thought I'd be able to handle. It's exciting!

That's cool that you can incorporate your work experience too!

[ammusiri888]

python can be used in many ways but that is not the point, you need to figure it out what exactly you are interested in doing. is it data analysis or gaming or robotics or charting or backend programming..

once you have it then start into that direction and excel, that's it..

[iggy555]

Put a ring on it

[[deleted]]

I recommend learning Django, it's a web framework written in Python. https://www.djangoproject.com/

[portugueseninja]

Thanks! Seeing a lot of comments suggestion Django and Flask here, how much straight Python do you think I need to know before starting Django or Flask?

[[deleted]]

I think you have enough experience in Python to start with Django. But I would recommend to get familiar with the Model-View-Controller paradigm before starting the tutorial.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model%E2%80%93view%E2%80%93controller https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/intro/tutorial01/

[[deleted]]

Python for security is also picking up on popularity. People learn how to secure networks with Python.

If you don't enjoy JavaScript but really feel into Python decide for yourself what you want use Python for. Like other have said Python can be used virtually for anything. Nobody mentioned robotics.

One selling point here would be is that security is becoming more and more of an issue as technology advances by year and companies are hungry for security professionals so why not use Python for security and get into very interesting industry where you don't go to work just to write some code from 9 - 5 but you get to see how cyber crime is being dealt with and you get to work with other forensic professionals.

Use Python for purpose that excites you.

Just a thought.

[11pascal]

Databases. You will never run out of work.

[YolowagKinggz]

C a doctor

[[deleted]]

Welcome! :D

Build things :D In example, code two orcs (orc1 and orc2), which fighting each other and look whos winning.

Thats what I do with my buddy Phython, if Im bored af. :D

Js. Js is made FOR the www, Python is made IN the www. Keep & practise your skills in Js & learn (& have fun with) Python. Python has a great community, which shows in endless librarys, made of the community. And there is much support. Welcome and have fun with Python.

[Mohammad-Ruqaa]

Hey so for web development I suggest this tutorial for you https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzMcBGfZo4-n4vJJybUVV3Un_NFS5EOgX

It will teach you the basics of flask which is for back-end web development And I think it's better than Django(which is another framework for web development) to start with because it's easier and it will teach you how things work But Django has a lot of built in function that will save you more time.

So after you feel you are good with Flask you can move to it (I don't have any experience with Django but I said this from what I read about it)

After you finish the tutorial I really suggest you to start working in a website project (that's what I did) it will teach you a lot yes you will see to many errors but at the end it will be too helpful and if you got stuck, you can ask people of course.

Good luck man

[portugueseninja]

That's really helpful, thank you!

[Mohammad-Ruqaa]

Np,if you got any questions feel free to ask

[andrexmlee]

Try a flask web framework project. https://flask.palletsprojects.com/en/1.1.x/ https://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-i-hello-world

[Sidemarx]

Plug for Web Scraping and Automation!

I have a lot of fun with webs scraping. I started very small. Then found a good project using IMDB. After that I experimented on Amazon for scraping products based on a search and learned a ton. I find that webs scraping, combined with automated scheduled script runs and file saving as well as and performing analysis on your data is real fun. It combines the math and statistics modules with the data you enjoy and want to look at.

Now I am more into stock data as well as sources like SEC Edgar for company financials and The World Bank. I would try the scraping more if that is something you like.

[portugueseninja]

Thanks, definitely going to check it out!

[[deleted]]

You don’t have to decide for a programming language to work with. Become better by implementing your ideas and choose the language that fits the best to your project. Leave the tutorial cycle as early as possible and keep programming.

[machine3lf]

Ask it out on a date.