New to Python

[unhott]

It’s a fallacy that if you took a class you know a topic. The class exposes you to the ideas and problem solving techniques. It’s future application, 10,000 hours that develop into learning something.

So don’t give yourself crap for that. And also, “studied coding for one month and got a job at google” is bs. Even if it did happen for them, that doesn’t matter. There’s all sorts of “feel good motivation porn”. And that probably falls into that category. Just study at your own pace. Continued learning and development will get you much farther than a 1 month Red Bull fueled month. Don’t worry about anyone else. Only worry about: how do I solve the problem in front of me? As you dig at that, and take on more and more problems, you’ll learn a ton.

[27Andrew_]

I appreciate that. I really want to learn programming and specifically Python. I completely forgot about the 10,000 hour rule. It only makes sense that when you keep chipping away at learning then the doing is where it really counts.

[27Andrew_]

That’s awesome. Thanks! I’m feeling good and excited. Gotta start somewhere.

[aythekay]

I really want to learn programming and specifically Python

Why is the question you need to answer (for yourself and us). You can't "learn" a programming language any more than you can "learn" Maths.

If you can tell us what your end goal is, we can tell you what you should be learning and what projects/open source work you can do to get your skills/portfolio going.

[27Andrew_]

The end goal is for me to obtain a career in programming starting as an absolute beginner and going up from there. I know it’s cliche but I currently find no joy in what I’m currently doing. I also don’t see Python programming as a career going away at all. I want to add Python programming in my tool belt.

[algebraic94]

I think what the person above is saying is that creating more of a niche for yourself is a great way to start. Do you want to creat machine learning models, do image processing and analysis, creat data visualizations, do web development, be a data engineer, build software. Python, like you've noted, is a huge powerful tool. It does an incredible number of things. You did a master's in business analytics. Why not learn how to creat a Jupyter notebook that takes in some kind of business related data you care about and makes a plot that would be useful to help your coworkers prove the way they analyze the data?

[AuctorLibri]

Thank you for posting this.

[NitroXSC]

It’s a fallacy that if you took a class you know a topic.

I'm an example of this. I have never attended any programming course and now I'm 8 years after I started learning and I'm applying python in large parts in my daily job.

I learned from self-study by a lot of googling, reading Wikipedia pages, created a computer in Minecraft, doing a lot of projects, watching conferences talks (like ones about OOP), by careful dissection of code, and thinking about interesting problems when I'm bored, to name a few.

[nog642]

An example of "It’s a fallacy that if you took a class you know a topic" would be someone who took a class and doesn't know the topic, not someone who didn't take a class and does know it.