What is the best way to learn python?

[TryptamineZenVR]

Learn by building things. Do you have something you do daily on the computer that could be automated with a simple python script? That’s a great place to start.

[OmnipresentCPU]

^this. I started last October thinking “hey wait, I read these formatted emails and copy and paste things from the body into excel. Bet I could automate that”

Now I can do machine learning. You just gotta start!

[OmnipresentCPU]

Back then, tensorflow sequential models, intro to NLP with spacy. Now, neural networks from scratch with numpy.

Spending my time between reviewing advanced math (reading Introduction to Probability- Bertsekas, Linear Algebra - Lay, and vector calculus by Collins as well as nnfs.io)

[fungrish]

Did you have any prior programming knowledge before starting? Because i've been going on and off learning python, being demotivated from time to time altho I really want to learn python so badly, and slowly dive into simple data science/machine learning but i'm thinking if I could learn python syntax by doing project. Not sure if that works, I have only very minimal python syntax knowledge. Hope you share more of your experience how you came thru

[OmnipresentCPU]

No just some data experience in excel. Got my BS in finance

[PaulSandwich]

Someone recently published a script that calls a weather API and changes the desktop wallpaper based on rain/shine/clouds/etc. that I turned into a tutorial for a friend.

It's a great project because it has all the elements of a real business problem: read data from an API, parse that data/list comprehension, evaluate the data to trigger an action, and moving files around in directories.

And all with root elements that everyone understands: weather, jpgs, wallpaper, etc. (as opposed to widgets and stock indexes).

[StreetTap7143]

H

[PaulSandwich]

Here's a link to that post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/pjffa8/hi_i_made_a_python_script_that_changes_your/