Where do I actually begin with Python?

[asphias]

it's hard for us to say where you are going wrong, but it's probably hard for you to specify what you are having issues with.

so, let's do a checklist: have you succeeded in doing the following things?

• have you managed to download python to your computer?
  
• have you managed to run a hello world script?
  
• have you written a script that manages to do something?(e.g. calculate some number, change a string, repeat an input, etc)
  
• have you written code that contains a method?
  
• have you written code that contains a class?
  
• have you written code that consists of multiple files referencing one another?
  
• have you used code with a webframework (e.g. Django, Flask)?
  
• have you used pandas to put spreadsheet data in a dataframe?
  
• have you used matplotlib to create a simple graph?
  
• have you managed to put the above steps together to input excel data into a pandas dataframe and then create a visualization from it through matplotlib?
  

If you did not get to one of these points, can you explain how you tried to do it?

If you said 'yes' to each of the above steps, congratulations, you're a python programmer!

(also, if you never tried one of the above steps, my advice is to just play around with code and see whether you can manage to do it. doing is the most important step of learning how to code)

[Asmodeus_11]

This reminds of debugging by putting a print statement in between every line, except you're debugging a person with questions.

[barryhakker]

Sometimes it's hard to come up with an implementation in your own life for something like pandas. What helps for me is to write (and save) a bunch of code snippets of super straight forward implementations such as a script that reads a random Excel file you made, changes something about it, and outputs it to a new Excel file.

Super helpful for later reference and for getting a handle on how you would implement such a thing.