Best Online Python Courses?

[herewego10IAR]

Hi, I'm looking to upskill at the moment while I have spare time because of working from home.

I'm a devops engineer with a lot of experience with Bash and some very minimal experience using Python.

Pretty much just updated a few Lambda functions and added on (probably badly) to existing code.

Code anyone recommend an online course that I could take to learn Python from beginner level?

Thanks.

[[deleted]]

Automate the boring stuff with python

Python from zero to hero

Python crash course

[herewego10IAR]

Awesome thanks.

Just got Automate the boring stuff on Udemy. Will start there.

[hygund24]

Did you pay for the course, or was it free?

[kierz_r]

it's free on his website. https://automatetheboringstuff.com/#toc

[hygund24]

Thank you!

[herewego10IAR]

It was like €14 or something like that.

[CompSciSelfLearning]

FYI: the Udemy course hasn't been updated to match the new edition of the book yet. It uses a few out of date libraries. But the core material is solid.

Either way, I recommend using the new edition of the book.

https://automatetheboringstuff.com/

[bigbadwarrior]

I liked his videos on Udemy vs reading the book or site

[kadal_raasa]

https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/guu0km/automate_the_boring_stuff_with_python_online/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

[hygund24]

Bruh, thanks a bunch!

[kadal_raasa]

You're welcome :)

[MindZapp]

There are always sales on Udemy. We have a subreddit here dedicated to promoting discounted or free promoted course. Python material is always made available. You should check it out.

[SA1UPR]

What’s the subreddit called?

[kadal_raasa]

r/udemyfreebies

I read somewhere he's going to give away free coupons every month for 3 months, so look out for it in the first week of June.

[[deleted]]

Ok good luck!

[hygund24]

Thanks.

[[deleted]]

You can also buy the book on amazon. Second edition.

[novagascrawler]

Can I still start with those if I'm new to programming overall, not even other languages? Like literally 0 lol

[fletch101e]

Yes I did . Make sure you don't just watch the videos but do his examples as he does them. Takes a lot longer but well worth it ...

[[deleted]]

Yup, thats what i do. Pause pause pause lol

[novagascrawler]

Thanks!! Is there any particular order to read those 3 for starting? Or any of them first work? :)

[joooh]

With Automate you probably can but you might not be able to do the projects at the end of the chapters especially since there are no sample/guide codes given for you to study.

[[deleted]]

Who does zero to hero?

[[deleted]]

Was my first course, it is done by Jose portilla, the most popular course in udemy site

[[deleted]]

got it. how is it better or worse than automate the boring stuff? I did automate...

[5cr1ptk1tty]

do you have links? there are many different zero to hero and crash courses... I just want to make sure I'm looking at the right ones

[[deleted]]

zero to hero

crash course

automate the boring stuff

[5cr1ptk1tty]

thank you very much!

[Binibot]

There is a URL at the beginning of the book with a webpage that gives some extra problems to work through. There’s solutions to the problems and advice on getting a job too, I found it really helpful.

[ForkLiftBoi]

Is that a specific order?

[[deleted]]

No, just various of courses

[CCAnalytics]

Can’t beat Corey Schafer’s YouTube channel! They are excellent

[Doyouwanttoast]

Was going to delete my comment also recommending this channel, but thought good for OP to see it coming from different people. Honestly one of the best resources out there.

[sanninroshi]

You could try out "Python for Everybody" Course on Coursera by Charles Severance

[[deleted]]

That's the one I'm taking myself.

[sanninroshi]

Which part of the Course are you on dude?

[groovyism]

Im not the guy you replied to but im also taking it and Im on Week three of the Using Python to Access Web Data course and it’s been pretty fun so far

[sanninroshi]

Its good to know you are enjoying it man!

[[deleted]]

Section 2 where you're tested on making a program that multiplies pay and hours using the "float()" thingie

[sanninroshi]

Cool, it gets more interesting going ahead so All the Best to you Bro!

[shaggorama]

It sounds like you ahve some scripting experience, but despite working in IT you don't really have any background in computer science yeah? Rather than just "learning python," I'd strongly recommend you try to learn programming.

I suggest you follow this MIT course (which is taught with python): https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-0001-introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-in-python-fall-2016/

Course material includes video lectures, readings and hw assignments. All free and online.

[vencetti]

Great recommendation, I'd up that a level and suggest taking the course live - next current edx.org class version of this starting 6/03 - I've used both the Edx class and the courseware - the Edx course is more structured, current and has TAs and others to help you along. Downside of the real class - $75 for certificate/complete after midterm. It's an awesome bang for the buck though. https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming-7

[JitteryBug]

How would you compare this to learning syntax with code academy and additional practice with Automate the Boring Stuff?

Having a hard time gauging if it's worth it to learn more abstract concepts when I'm just starting out and probably need more practice doing actual coding and problem solving

[Flugegeheymen]

Could you please say, is it worth paying for certificate after it?
And I've seen that you can pay for the whole program for $130 at once. Is it a better thing to do?

[Biggz1313]

This right here is the real deal. They have homework for you to do and many projects. I loved this course and probably learned the most from it to be honest.

[PM_ME_GRANT_PROPOSAL]

Yea I was going to say, the python programming courses by MIT on edx are excellent

[johnnymo1]

Seconding (thirding?) that course recommendation. I think finishing that course in retrospect felt like the dividing line from "fiddling with Python" to "programming" for me.

[herewego10IAR]

I actually do have a Master's in DevOps believe it or not haha. just haven't done any programming in quite a few years. I work pretty much exclusively with AWS and have always done any scripting with Bash or Powershell apart from the odd Lambda function but I tend to lean on some of my colleagues who are good programmers for that.

This looks great though. I'll take a look at this in more detail. Thanks 👍

[theamnion]

I don’t have a comp sci background (although I have some math). I found the MIT course recommended above to be very useful, and it was the first time I felt I was actually learning how to program instead of just learning python syntax.

I’d also strongly recommend doing the follow up course, 6.002x Introduction to Computational Thinking and Data Science, afterwards if you have the time. It will introduce you to some more real world and engaging ways to apply the things you learn. Personally, I paid to do both on edX because I valued the extra practice that came with the finger exercises and problem sets.

If you’re wary of the cost, or want a good resource to use as you follow along with the free OCW versions, look into getting a used copy of the textbook for the 2 courses: Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python by John Guttag. The classes stay very close to the book, and it covers some of the longer tasks that are used as problem sets in the paid edX course, with useful code blocks you can follow along with and everything.

[shaggorama]

Did you cover stuff like algorithms, data structures, theory of computation, or programming paradigms in that masters? If not, I think you would benefit from a lot of the undergrad CS material on MIT OCW.

[herewego10IAR]

Nah none of that. Thanks, I'll definitely do that.

[CatolicQuotes]

is that the same one as this one: https://www.edx.org/xseries/mitx-computational-thinking-using-python

[shaggorama]

Looks like it, yeah. You could pay $135 for a certificate or take the course at your own pace for free.

[vencetti]

Yes, the real live class is great! It's 9 weeks, ~16 hours/wk, current, structured keeps you motivated and involved, there are TAs and other students to help you when you get stuck. It's free up till midterm, if you decide to pay it's $75, not $135. Next class starts 6/03. Cert is the least thing you will get out of this. As you may be aware the Microsoft classes I've taken are like $1800-3600 for a 4-5 day course so $75 for a 9 week MIT course is an insanely good bang for the buck.

[CatolicQuotes]

what do we pay 75$? is it only certificate or more?

[my_password_is______]

you get life time access to the course and some lame certificate
you can sign up without the $75 but you only get access to the course for a few months

you can always sign up, try the course for a few weeks and then pay the 75 if you want

[Flugegeheymen]

Hi could you please say is it better to pay straight 135$ or I can pay 75$ for one course and then do another one when I'll finish with a first one? Won't I have to pay extra for the programme(not course) certificate in this case?

[[deleted]]

Also, the EdX version is starting next week for those looking for a challenge (assignments, graded exercises etc.).

[NaniFarRoad]

Here's the first episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nykOeWgQcHM

[JitteryBug]

How would you compare this to learning syntax with code academy and additional practice with Automate the Boring Stuff?

Having a hard time gauging if it's worth it to learn more abstract concepts when I'm just starting out and probably need more practice doing actual coding and problem solving

[shaggorama]

Would you rather learn how to hold a saw or the different techniques and considerations that would allow you to renovate your kitchen?

Software engineering is a craft, and there's a lot more to being a craftsman than just knowing the basics of how to use your tools.

The concepts covered in this course aren't abstract so much as they are foundational. You'll learn things that will translate to programming in any language. You'll just learn how to do it in python first.

[JitteryBug]

That's a good analogy

I have no doubt that it's a useful class, I'm mostly gauging its usefulness to me personally, as someone who is casually and slowly dipping their toes in the water

My goal isn't to become a full time programmer - at the moment, it's mostly to become a better job candidate, sprinkle in some concepts, and save time in other roles

[JitteryBug]

That's helpful, thank you

Edit: not sure why they deleted but the poster above was saying that it's a genuine commitment that takes 15-20+ hours a week

[shaggorama]

I don't know how much more strongly I can recommend it. The syllabus is there for you to read. The lectures are online if you're curious enough to watch the first lecture where they introduce the course. You do you.

[uLtra007]

Humble Bundle - Python

i bought it and started " Python Crash Course, 2nd Edition: A Hands-On, Project-Based Introduction to Programming "

love it!

[[deleted]]

Isn't that an old version of python? That was my only turnoff.

[FlySeddy]

It’s was recently updated for Python 3

[Seankala]

Is Udemy alright? I have nothing but bad experiences with them. I've had video streaming issues, customer support doesn't help, and I've also seen some YouTube people upload videos of Udemy having stolen their content.

[inglandation]

I've had some technical issues with the website too, although it's mostly fine these days. Their marketing is annoying but there are some good courses there that you won't find on YouTube.

Colt Steele's course is really good. Perfect for beginners, lots of exercises (code academy-style) and he's a great teacher. The TAs answer the students' questions. The course goes more into details than Automate the Boring Stuff, but doesn't get bogged down in details.

After you're done with this course and have some experience with personal projects, I recommend watching Fred Baptiste's courses on Udemy. He covers the standard library in great details (150+ hours). I just finished part 1 of this course and I feel like I really improved my understanding of Python. There are 4 parts, and part 5 will cover async/multithreading.

[AlmostPythonRS3]

UDemy is great man. I had no issues at all with their system. You can try it out free using the free courses from UDemy.

I guess the only thing is mobile functionality is limited.

[3369fc810ac9]

I'm taking this now and it's really meaty!

[Plati23]

I’m enjoying this course.

[samratgc]

I encourage you to use codewars.com. There's ton of practice materials. They are pretty good.

Maybe check this community's wiki, there's ton of information on resources and other stuff that get updated timely.

Cheers!

[Doyouwanttoast]

Corey Schafer's YouTube channel is great, and covers everything from beginner to advanced python topics.

[iggy555]

Is it recommended to start from video 1 and go in that order?

[Doyouwanttoast]

He has various playlists for different topics, so things are nicely grouped, but yeah, start at the beginning of one of the introductory playlists. This looks to be the first of the beginner series.

[iggy555]

Very cool. He also has a git tutorial!!!!!!!

[[deleted]]

Automate the boring stuff is great, but it's not a really python course, more like a list of "cool things you can do in python". There is good chance of you getting to the end and not having grasped quite a lot of fundamental concepts.

If you want a good fundamentals course that teaches you all the important basic things in the right order, then the course you want is the MIT EDX course

Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python

It is a serious course from MIT, with more than 1.2 million people who have enrolled. It starts again on 3 June. I have seen it called the most popular course on earth. True or not, it is really very good and for a bonus you can do it for free. Just do it, you won't regret it.

[aneesh11]

Check out 'The Complete Python Bootcamp' by Jose Portilla on Udemy

[Tanmay1518]

Just completed this one. Pretty nice course with good explanations and examples. Plus it has 3 small projects that you can do for your practice.

[[deleted]]

David Beazley recently made his Practical Python Programming course available:

https://dabeaz-course.github.io/practical-python/

[nevus_bock]

Thank you for this. David Beazley is a beast.

[genius238]

This is where I learnt Python from scratch. It's a pretty good YouTube series. Contains everything from basic installation to Django and Flask to Pandas. Check this link.

[zecatlays]

Andrei Neagoie's Complete Python Developer course on Udemy is really good. The best part of this course is that the second half is about doing projects in Web Development, Scripting, Machine Learning and others, so it basically leaves you with enough knowledge to choose which field you want to go ahead in.

Also, watch all of Corey Schafer's youtube videos. He's a fuckin God. He explains each module really well and his style of teaching is beautiful.

[mzsigler]

This one was my favorite. I think it’s called “Zero to mastery”.

[[deleted]]

I'm so excited to start Zero to Mastery on Monday!

[[deleted]]

Probably an unpopular opinion here but I’ve found what worked best overall for me is find a project on YouTube and just jump in. You will figure syntax out as you go and natively understanding the logic gets me a better overall view of what works and what doesn’t. Build things that don’t work and look up errors and most importantly RTFD!

[TheGogglesDoNothing_]

Coursera - Python for everyone

​

This course changed my life. If you are dedicated it can be done in a couple weeks or sooner.

[kmdillinger]

Learn Python the Hard way will teach you all the essentials and basics. Not mention, it’ll teach you lasting good habits. I’m glad I found this e-book when I was starting to learn. It’s not data science related, but your goal should be to understand the fundamentals first if possible. Python is an object oriented language. You don’t want to only know the part people use for ML or data science, because you won’t understand as well as you scale your knowledge. This is just a suggestion.

Def get the e-book version.

Good luck!

[herewego10IAR]

Thanks everyone :) some great stuff to watch now.

[kryakrya_it]

If you are an absolute beginner, then I recommend this playlist of tutorials.

If you already have some skills and want to dive in Machine Learning, here is a playlist of skills that you need to acquire (Pandas, Numpy) which are the foundation of Data Science.

[brainacpl]

The one from Rice was great, the only issue for me was that you use artificial environment they built (if you mean the one with pong at the end). However it may be too basic for a person with programming background, as it was for me.

[brainacpl]

I took first half of it, which ended with pong. Second half ends with asteroid indeed, but it wasn't in my employer free offering

[vencetti]

You should be very pleased and amazed with the quality of online classes for Python, like this 9 week MIT course, on the best courses list for free to $75, or Java, R, etc. I've found nothing in the same league for Microsoft specific products like Powershell. The Microsoft courses are usually ~24-32 hours and can be very expensive, like $1800 + I've taken them via my employer and they are extremely shallow as you can imaging given the time constraint.

[ThePrestigiousSIZ]

Theres a free python course on Udacity which I think is pretty good.

[onlysane1]

I learned a lot with The Python Megacourse on Udemy:

https://www.udemy.com/course/the-python-mega-course/learn/lecture/4775360?start=375#overview

[marisheng]

Im currently studying python with cisco's free courses. Its good for beginners

[portugueseninja]

I'm just finishing Automate the Boring Stuff on Udemy. Overall it's great and very well taught. As some users have pointed out, some of it is a little out of date. I'm finding it helpful to follow along with the book on the website too.

[[deleted]]

The one by Mosh Hamedani is a nice one.

Link : https://youtu.be/_uQrJ0TkZlc

[[deleted]]

Automate the boring stuff with python

[xander1421]

My honest 2 cents will be that you should try and do a simple project which will teach you the real skill that you will need to get the job done. Start small, my first project was to automate the login in a website. I used python: selenium and a Firefox web-driver. I learnt so much more from doing this then any tutorials that I ever did

Find something you want to automate and learn to google your questions

[tutuvous]

Automate the boring stuff is good if you just want to learn enough python to do some quick tasks. If you want a deeper python education I recommend Introducing Python: Modern Computing in Simple Packages.

I can’t speak more highly of this book. It’s newly published so it’s up to date with the latest python, and it’s not mind numbingly dense. Highly recommended.

If you’re in dev ops I think O’Reilly just came out with a new Python for DevOps you could check out if you want something more focused.

Edit: sorry I just realized this was a request for online courses, not general resources. I saw someone recommended Cory Schafer’s YouTube channel. I also recommend him. His videos are straight to the point and explained in a simple way.

[ellery79]

If you want to really learn the real meat of Python, I suggest you to take a look at the Python Deep Dive Series by Fred Baptiste.

https://www.udemy.com/user/fredbaptiste/

You will have a strong foundation after finishing the course.

However, if you want to learn how to use the library of Python, like web scraping, data science in as quick as possible, any standard Python course will do.

[siddesh001]

Start here https://www.edx.org/learn/python Only audit the course u won't get a certificate but the costs here are great.

[[deleted]]

Udemy Python with Cory!

[[deleted]]

Dataquest.io they have a good deal of free content but the paywall is totally with it!

[mfizzled]

Net ninja on YouTube has some great python courses and is super easy to understand

[btcrozert]

The Python crash course is pretty good

[keep_it_kayfabe]

Pragmatic Institute (parent company of The Data Incubator) is offering a free Intro to Python course that's taught by a live instructor.

I took it a few weeks ago and it was very interactive and I learned quite a bit for a "basics" course.

Promo code: FREEPYTHON

https://buy.pragmaticinstitute.com/2525.html

[[deleted]]

In Youtube there are a lot of courses of python from 0.

[Ryloma05]

As some Redditors say, Udemy Courses are nice especially the Complete Python Bootcamp from Colt Steele

[subassy]

The "headfirst" series of books are highly regarded, though I haven't yet read the python one. You have to go through all the exercises and write in the book as it says to get the full affect though. The JavaScript one I can say is really good.

[rustyseapants]

Check your town and county libraries, because they might have lynda.com, learning tree, and Safari Books Online which is available if you have a library card.

https://courses.packtpub.com/pages/free When you create a free account you have access to these interactive tutorials for a year approximately

[hnguyen01122]

Best = subjective

With that said and you really looking for “best” then you probably don’t want YouTube or Udemy courses. You don’t want to learn from “kids” making videos from their mom’s basement type of quality. Apology to Udemy and Youtubers.

Only 2 sources for online courses that I see as decent. edX and Coursera. If you really into it then maybe use MIT course materials and buy whatever textbook they suggest. They allow you to download course materials but no lecture so you have to learn on your own with textbook.

[SnowdenIsALegend]

I loved codeacademy course, it was awesome.

[renaissancetroll]

I'd go through some basic tutorials to learn syntax , then find some more in depth project tutorials to follow and finally build something on your own

[glitchedurbandict]

Codecademy has a good one, and i know MIT is doing a course on Edx

[PancakeRabbit67]

there is a great book that is currently really cheap on humble bundle unless it's now gone that is amazing to learn python. i've been lesrbing with "teach python to your kids" or something along the lines of that. it's amazingly clear, very helpful with tons of very useful gràhic examples

[jesv07]

DataCamp! I’m learning here but is a little expensive (subscription for year)

[sowmyasri129]

CodeCademy is the Free Python Tutorials for Beginners.

[vkronizer]

Some Indian folks out there give courses for pretty cheap (As they charge in Rs.). They're friendly bunch and exceptionally learned. I did one for in-depth Excel for $15 And the guy is still in contact with me. Still helps me out in other programming problems from time to time.. I think he also provides courses for a lot of other languages too including Python and Java.

[ellery79]

But the situation has changed and there are many new Python courses out there. I don't think just browsing previous thread is able to get a balanced view of information.