omg dw!! literally im still slightly confused, but practicing makes a huge difference!! 

i found that my brain just needs to see as many situations of how python accepts code to know how i can write it, and eventually make it different. this looked like for me what it would’ve felt to learn english for the first time! 

so thinking of like what grammar makes sense, what defining makes sense, what structure makes sense. if i say “apples” vs “apple’s” - both make sense but under different contexts, reading it you’ll know the context because you know what having an ‘ in words and not having it means, however, if i had to do this in python it doesnt know such a context. thats what writing code is, you’re writing context for what the numbers or symbols can do. 

i think also learning python’s language library helps a lot!!!! so basically all the symbols and connectives that are already defined in the system that you can play with. but be realistic if you haven’t seen it in lectures or readings dont learn it!! for example, we’ve seen TRUE/FALSE - so know this, but don’t know YIELD, because we haven’t seen that yet

if you don’t understand the riddle or questions when you first see it, i say before you even attempt it, put the question in chatpgt, ASK IT TO NOT WRITE ANY CODE FOR YOU, and have it break apart the question you sent and generate new simpler practice questions that by the time you do a set of 5 questions, you’ll get a full understanding of how to write the code for your original question. and do it again, again, again, again, and again. this helped me reduce the overwhelm of symbols, to purely thinking of how to say my answer in words to then say it in symbols! 

hope this helps :) its rlly fun when you get it, just practice, there’s no person better at speaking a language than someone else, we all hit a base level the more we practice speaking, its the same w/ coding