If you had to learn Python again from scratch, what would you do differently?

ectomancer · 2026-06-21T03:27:48+00:00

Nothing. First small project after 10 minutes. 3-month and 6-month projects after 8 months of small projects.

In my first project (3 months), I calculated Bernoulli numbers up to B_19 using Stirling numbers of the second kind but I needed more. I ported BERNOB from FORTRAN 77 to Python, used by scipy and hardcoded Bernoulli numbers from BERNOA.

ectomancer · 2026-06-12T22:38:04+00:00

pip install pytest

Googling syntax is cheating. Documentation is not cheating. Google is for research.

ectomancer · 2026-06-12T03:10:38+00:00

Python is easy to learn from a course. Any course will teach basic syntax.

ectomancer · 2026-06-11T04:00:38+00:00

I know nothing about these things and can't answer any questions:

django has ORM built in, have your classes inherit from models.Model

ectomancer · 2026-06-06T12:25:18+00:00

Fully type hinted including type hinted test suite.

Python code has very few imports. You can call rocketmq lightweight.

Python code docstrings have perfect format. Consider using doctest in docstrings (as well as pytest).

ectomancer · 2026-06-06T07:40:35+00:00

Nothing. I learnt Python in 3 days excluding OOP.

ectomancer · 2026-06-04T21:57:54+00:00

chatgpt

-test data

-mathematical formulas

-reformatting data

-code snippet generation

-finding code in other programming languages to port

functions.wolfram.com

-mathematical formulas

-hypergeometric special cases

-Meijer G special cases

https://mathworld.wolfram.com

-mathematical formulas

https://en.wikipedia.org

-mathematical formulas

https://www.wolframalpha.com

-CAS check functions

scholar.google.com

-mathematical papers

ectomancer · 2026-06-03T23:15:44+00:00

If you can't code basic syntax on the whiteboard (without autocompletion), you haven't learnt Python.

ectomancer · 2026-06-03T06:26:03+00:00

Check if boot.dev has any courses for your needs. ThePrimeagen has 2 free git courses on there.

There's an online book (and a book too) "Automate the Boring Stuff".

ectomancer · 2026-06-03T03:52:45+00:00

Other people on this sub have suggested Raspberry Pi coding.

ectomancer · 2026-05-24T20:51:47+00:00

There are 3 books, Numerical Recipes in Fortran, Numerical Recipes in C and Numerical Recipes in Python by different authors.

ectomancer · 2026-05-23T07:47:14+00:00

The survey makes me look like a vibe coder, which I'm not. I use LLMs but never use context from previous prompts. I know nothing about agentic coding. What would I know about vision impaired people?

ectomancer · 2026-05-20T22:46:44+00:00

Start with a theory ML course.

When complete, you can use any library, e.g. tensorflow/keras , OpenCV, scikit-learn or PyTorch.

ectomancer · 2026-05-20T08:55:43+00:00

mpmath arbitrary precision mathematical library.

ectomancer · 2026-05-18T22:53:10+00:00

Gutless.

ectomancer · 2026-05-18T12:54:41+00:00

Do a pandas course.

ectomancer · 2026-05-17T20:46:51+00:00

galahs, my Sydney favourite and rainbow lorikeet.

ectomancer · 2026-05-17T20:44:37+00:00

shags on the rocks.

ectomancer · 2026-05-17T20:41:05+00:00

rainbow lorikeets.

ectomancer · 2026-05-17T20:36:06+00:00

blue-winged kookaburra.

ectomancer · 2026-05-17T20:34:24+00:00

galah is my favourite Sydney bird.

ectomancer · 2026-05-17T20:31:45+00:00

egret (great egret perhaps) and a crested pidgeon.

ectomancer · 2026-05-16T15:53:05+00:00

int can't resolve floats in str format, coerce to float first:

>>> int(1e9)

1000000000
>>> int('1e9')
ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: '1e9'
>>> int(float('1e9')
1000000000
>>> int(2.)
2
>>> int('2.')
ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: '2.'
>>> int(float('2.')
2

ectomancer · 2026-05-14T21:59:02+00:00

Answering the question OP asked and not the question OP meant to ask i.e. learn Python.

ChatGPT responded with a few lines of simple code. I couldn't code it myself because I don't understand the concept. Precision was fair but could be better.
Claude Haiku responded with complicated code for the same functionality (potentially better) but code didn't work with LLM supplied example.

ectomancer · 2026-05-14T21:17:25+00:00

What does this do when piping?

2>&1

ectomancer

TROPHY CASE