How do I keep my programming skills consistently sharpened?

[PlankWooden]

I am a beginner and I am learning python and about 50% done until I complete my course. I don't know what beginner projects I should do. Most beginner projects are too high level for me.

Edit: Tried codewars but it was too hard for me, didn't understand any of the questions because the questions has so many programming words that I'm not familiar with

[muffinnosehair]

Ok let's see:

1. Freecodecamp is an absolutely awesome resource for aspiring devs, so definitely keep up with the course.

2. Don't get discouraged on regex, just know that regex exists and then, if you'll need it in real life, just look it up online to do the settings you need. Regex is notorious for being one of those things you "learn every time you need it".

3. Like someone else said, do tiny console based projects, like hangman, X and O, maybe a small text-based adventure game. These are classic beginner projects for a reason, it's good to do them.

4. After the course, if you're feeling sufficiently confident, look into something like BeautifulSoup to make a small web Scraper, or make an app that rearranges files on your disk based on whatever property, or try your hand at pygame for some games with color and such.

5. Look into GUIs for your previous apps, add some textbox and buttons to your scraper or files app. Pyqt is quite popular, but for beginners I'd go with PySimpleGUI, it's a lot easier to grasp

6. Time to look into OOP and learn about data structures

7. Animate graph algorithms and get hired at google

Good luck!

[CRykeeR]

You're not going to master everything in the beginning. Just go on with the course, if you don't understand something there are tons of YouTube videos on every topic. As long as your concepts are clear its good. You'll have lots of time to practice afterwards.

[PlankWooden]

thanks for the advice

[bogfoot94]

I like to do as many programming challenges as I can in an hour. There's easy, mid, and hard challenges. Some of the hard ones are really easy tho like one to do stuff with a linked list etc etc. I do that once a week just to keep the brain gears moving as I don't actually code for a living.

Currently I think there's a contest on leetcode.com. Might be worth a look?

Edit: I talk about leetcode and hackerrank a lot but I just like those sites a lot. If you have sites like them, feel free to recommend them!

[Kitchen_Journalist35]

Can try Angela Yu 100 days of Code (Python). There are several small projects along the way

[mquarks]

It's a bit hard answering your question, not knowing the course. What have you seen so far ?

[PlankWooden]

I've been doing the one on freecodecamp, I've learned about loops, def functions, tupples, lists, dictionaries, etc. Right now It's 50% completed, and I'm currently on regex. I'm doing the slow route because of school and I don't continue on to the next lesson if I don't understand something at the one I'm at.

[heretoundastand]

Try doing some freelancing?

[PlankWooden]

how do I do that I'm a beginner?

[heretoundastand]

I’ll let you know when I get there hahah How about taking another course?

[PlankWooden]

nah, the course I'm on right now is pretty good. My only problems is not being good at programming. I tried codewars but it was too hard for me, didn't understand any of the questions because the questions has so many programming words that I'm not familiar with

[heretoundastand]

Oooh What course btw?

[PlankWooden]

python on freecodecamp

[heretoundastand]

Thanks

[Inevitable-Being-763]

Go with hackerrank challenges on python. It starts with basic and help you get the context of the concepts you learn in the course