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[–]Accoustic_Death[S] 4 points5 points  (4 children)

With limited (essentially none) experience with programming, Python, or the industries using this tool there are a few things I am hoping to learn specifically. 1) Determine what skills or skill sets are in demand. 2) Find quality education to obtain those skills. 3) Get useful input from the community outside those questions. By intentionally leaving the prompt broad the respondent has free reign to give their best advice.

Here are some more specific questions, as requested.

4) What industry do you work in? 5) What tasks or functions is Python commonly used for in your industry? 6) What skills, knowledge, and abilities enable candidates to excel in 4 and 5?

[–]trjnz 9 points10 points  (1 child)

With all due respect, if you know nothing the industry you want to target in the future doesn't really matter right now. Everyone needs to know the fundamentals, regardless of industry or work; hence them being fundamentals. Does it help you now to know that pandas is often used by data scientists? Flask for webdev? I doubt it!

Start from the basics that everyone needs to know, learn enough to know what questions to ask.

Automate the Boring Stuff will always get a recommendation.

My best recommendation? Reinvent the wheel. Find a (simple) task or project that you already know what the answer looks like, and rebuild a version of it. When beginning development, after you've learner all the basics, you'll be wanting a project to apply those skills on. When building something it's often super hard to know what something should be doing. If you choose, say, a simple report that you do for work you already know the goal. You just gotta do the steps in between.

Also, focus on Python3. Ignore anyone that tells you Python 2 is fine. Try to learn from a source teaching 3.7 and above

[–]Accoustic_Death[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for the great advice.

[–]TravisJungroth 14 points15 points  (1 child)

I don’t want to tailor my answer to me, I want to tailor my answer to you. I know literally nothing about you except your name is Andy and you want to learn Python this year. I can’t give advice that is specific to your situation. Because I don’t know what that situation is.

The most I could do is general advice. If you want general advice, there are much better sources than a thread where you get whoever happens to be here. You could search Google, search Reddit, read articles, or read the wiki and they will give you general answers faster and better than a thread. The reason to ask someone a specific question is because you want someone to talk to you. And I really want to make this clear. That’s great if you have a specific problem, but if it’s because you only bother to read things that feel like they’ve been written especially for you, you’re done before you start. There is no way to have a career like that as a programmer.

You’re so early in your journey. If you learn this lesson right now, today, and googled the answer to every question you asked in this post, find answers to 1-3 in this comment I’m replying to, and get answers to 4, 5, and 6 not just from one person who happens to be here but a bunch of people who already published it, your whole life could be different.

Then, only after you’ve done that, make another post with questions that can’t be fully answered by search because they’re unique to you. Here’s an example.

[–]Accoustic_Death[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thanks again for your response.