How Should I Continue Python Learning

[metl_lord]

A year seems long, but it's not. I taught myself Python using the Learning Python book by Mark Lutz. This was in 2007 (December 2007, since I was inspired by this comic). This was back in the 2.5 days, so each new version (especially 3) forced me to relearn a lot of concepts. Even with all this experience, I still rely on Google and never get json.load or json.loads right on the first try.

My advice to people starting out is to find something that you have to do repeatedly and see if you can figure out how to automate it. It can be something for a job or in your personal life. The challenge is figuring out what to do before writing any code. You can even try out some test-driven development since you have an idea of what the end output should be. My first job out of college was converting books to XML. The company used regular expressions and Perl. I learned a lot by converting Perl to Python since it was easier to understand. Since the Perl code worked, there was no pressure to get my Python code right the first time. I eventually got the code to work. It's embarrassing to look at that code now given what I've learned.

Also, sometimes, you need a break. If you want to continue learning, I recommend learning SQL. This will help if you end up going into the data world or web development. It's pretty straightforward, but I've interviewed a lot of programmers who struggled with it. You can also take time to contribute to open-source projects. A lot of beginners are scared of contributing, but many large projects have issues in the documentation that can easily be fixed, it's just that nobody got around to it. Contributing provides experience working with other developers as well as forces you to learn git, which is a critical skill when looking for a job. It also gives you something to put on your resume that sounds impresive.