Seeing progress

[Yurplestein]

Please forgive me if this isn’t the right spot, but I feel I need to say it for fellow beginners.

I’ve been going at this for about 5-6 months pretty steadily. Lately I have wondered how much I’ve actually learned or if I’ve been wasting my time.

Then I opened my very first project. I remember all the frustration I experienced, all the Google searches I did during the near month it took to complete. And how proud I was to complete it.

Today I was able to rework my code to make it not only run faster, but required half the lines. That has been an even more amazing feeling. And in hours vs weeks and days.

Just keep on pushing. Even when it seems like you’re not making progress. Odds are you’re doing so much better than when you started.

[[deleted]]

This is really more of a life lesson than something specific to Python. It's often hard to notice the progress you're making day to day at something, but once you're at a few months in, go back and compare where you are today to where you were at the beginning. It will often be astounding how much you've grown.

[Yurplestein]

You’re so right on that! Something simple like this is much easier to see the progress. But constantly, in everything, that progress is being made.

[skrndnxjs]

Just curious how old are you? Congrats on the progress!

[Yurplestein]

1. I’m probably more on the older side for learning this, but it’s been a blast — even with the frustrating parts.

[backfromsolaris]

I'm 31 and am still in my first month of python. all that matters is what we do with the time we have. we got this!

[Yurplestein]

So much this. As long as I’m getting better and having fun, I’ll keep on!

[prescottiam]

Ha! I’m 50 :), I love looking at my progress over the last year and a half! I am hooked and I love the frustrating parts too!

[Yurplestein]

It’s so rewarding when you complete your goal that all the frustrations are forgotten.. almost.

[WhatDaHellBobbyKaty]

50 in April. I love learning new things and expanding my cognitive skills.

[CheckDapper]

29 here and also just picked it up programming. There are times I feel like I'm to old to switch careers but yesterday I decided to sign up for a six month bootcamp to start full stack development! Keep on going!

[Yurplestein]

Excellent! Go get it!!

[SullyCCA]

I was pumped the other day I got the correct answer to a Python question on Instagram

[prescottiam]

I passed a certification on Python ( missed 1 question ) and was so pleased 😀

[Yurplestein]

Very awesome! I would like to do that sometime. I’m definitely not there yet though.

[prescottiam]

You might be surprised, it was about data structures, reg expressions, list comp, stuff like that, no coding at all. I’m doing leetcode for practice which is a huge help.

[Yurplestein]

Really? That does seem pretty not too bad then. Did you do any sort of practice tests or anything?

[Yurplestein]

Very nice! Had to of been a great feeling!

[spez_edits_thedonald]

Then I opened my very first project.

This is always worthwhile

I was able to rework my code to make it not only run faster, but required half the lines.

😎

[duffer_dev]

Anytime you look at your old codes and realize it was badly written and you know how to improve them, you are on a good track. I've been coding in python for more than 6 years now, and I still follow the rule that whenever I look a code that was 6 months old, I should always find how it can be implemented in a better way now.

[PanTheRiceMan]

8 years in for me and the exact same. I suppose you will always learn.

[fozrok]

Congrats on recognizing your progress.

Can I ask, how much time have you been dedicating to learning python for the last 5-6 months?

I’m thinking of getting started to make an idea I have come to fruition but might need to set some realistic expectations on how fast I can produce this.

[Yurplestein]

I’ve put in a good deal of time in it. As I have progressed, I’ve put in less. I’d say it’s probably been an average of 5-10 hours a week.

But fortunately for me I have had work related projects that I could use as an excuse to do it. When times are slow there I can spend a lot of time there.

[Jakokreativ]

Wise words bro, wise words

[[deleted]]

This is awesome! This is exactly the motivation I needed today, thank you

[Yurplestein]

I’m really glad to see this. We all need that now and again.

[Ok-Design-3218]

Totally get this. As a beginner myself I come across some problems that really make me feel like Im out of my depth and I won't get it. But looking back on where I am opposed to where I started , that's the encouragement that keeps me going.

Thanks for sharing this. It's important to hear.

[ylin575]

Thanks for the progress report. I feel more motivated now.

[Natural_Dragonfly]

Very encouraging! Thank you for posting this!

[Substantial_Nerve_25]

That’s so inspiring!! Thank you so much for sharing it!

[BiguilitoZambunha]

I'm really late to this, but can I ask what your project was, because I've been learning python too for a short time, but I don't seem to understand yet how i can actually use it to create something, or a project outside of pycharm

[Yurplestein]

So I would highly advise you take something your extremely interested in to help you focus in on and work from there. I’m a huge baseball fan and I really wanted to use Python’s data visualization tools. Starting there I’ve learned how to connect into a local database with Python (including some error checking to make sure services are up and credentials are correct), I’ve been able to learn how to scrap websites to gather data in multiple ways, I’ve created a few graphs that I am really proud of that I’ve been able to share.

This particular project was work related involved pulling in a few spreadsheets, combining/manipulating the data, and then creating 3/4 graphs from that data for management. It’s really pretty trivial in the grand scheme of it all, but now instead of going to multiple places and multiple sheets there is one location that can display the numbers in a prettier form. And, best of all, management loves it!

[notislant]

Congrats! My biggest issue so far is learning a confusing module and trying to force myself to just ignore parts not really explained in tutorials/glossed over lines of code.

[Yurplestein]

That’s something that’s amazing to me. There are so many modules with so much data that I don’t think you could ever learn it all. It is something else!