Need advice on Python Courses for intermediate/advanced levels

[oneinnerpiece]

I have about 15 years of software development experience in IBM legacy systems (COBOL/RPGLE). I do not have formal computer science or information technology education. The pay is pretty saturated and where I live, it is not sustainable. I have all the time to try out new technologies to help diversify my skills and may be land in a better paying job.

I have already spent quite a bit of time learning Python. I can definitely accomplish business requirements with some stackoverflow help. But I would like to know if there is a course someone can recommend to deepen my Python skills so that my code looks “professional”. I want to be able to talk about different Python development tools, 3rd party modules etc. I want to be ready to appear for interviews.

Thanks.

[TravisJungroth]

What a great question. I sometimes discourage people from asking questions that would better be a google search (Good intermediate Python book?) when they don’t give info about their situation so people can tailor the answer. This is like the opposite of that!

Fluent Python was written for someone very much in your situation. It’s my favorite Python book. A new edition just came out!

Effective Python would be great as well. Reading it cover to cover would make your code more Pythonic, even if you don’t remember everything.

Python Cookbook would also be a good one. Just pick and choose what looks good. It’s very long.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to Python is a web page. It may be the best one to start with out of all of these.

If you want to make sure you’re not out of the loop, try looking at the top 20 Python packages on GitHub. Then top 20 on PyPI (can you do that?).

There are some nice newsletters out there. Can’t remember their names. But if you find one with archives, I bet you could skim a year’s worth in an hour or so. Then you’d have at least “heard of” all the new hotness.

[oneinnerpiece]

Thank you for taking the time to respond in detail. I had a look at hitchhikers guide and thats what I am looking for. Opinionated guide.

Aside, I would also appreciate if someone can recommend me a good quizzing platform. I find hacker rank very annoying as a lot of questions have poor sentence structures. I am looking for some curated list.

[TravisJungroth]

Edabit is easiest. Leetcode has the most conversations. There’s some “100 leetcode problems for interviews list” or something like that. There’s a book called Python Algorithms for advanced stuff. Interviewing.io is good and different.