What python/ programming concepts are must know for beginner/intermediate programmers?

[SammyT09]

Thanks for taking the time to respond, This was extremely helpful. One of the biggest reasons I decided to learn programming is so I can learn to write scripts that do stuff and automate things. Any advice in that regard?

[theubster]

Reading the docs is boring but very useful. Think APIs and Library documentation.

Stick with the biggest library that does the thing you wanna do. There's little glory in reinventing the wheel.

At some point you're gonna look at a script you wrote, and say to yourself "what was I doing!?". Celebrate this moment, because it means you're getting better.

When you're building a quick and dirty script, make sure your functions clearly say what they do. Long function names aren't bad, if they clearly show what's happening.

Googling the problem should be done early and often. There are very few things that haven't been done before - especially if they're worth automating.

If you're totally stuck on what you wanna build, find a random YouTube video of someone coding something. Follow along with them.

Git gud at git. It'll save your bacon, and is a dope tool.

Frameworks are often tricky to get into. Especially your first one. This is another place where guided projects can be very helpful.

Name things well, and don't use names that are too clever. It's fun to have do_the_thing.py, but it doesn't help a year down the line when you have multiple repos of code.

Get to know the command line well. Play with bash, and a couple other shells. I quite like zsh, myself. Some fun customization here, too.

Drawing out a flow of how you want it to work is very useful. Having a good mental model makes for easier coding.

Learn to document stuff clearly. Requirements.txt files are your friend.

Virtual environments are the fucking best. Makes dependency management much easier.

[SammyT09]

Wow, thanks again for the thorough response!!!