How I would go about learning one of the world’s most popular programming languages
Nowadays, Python is the go-to language for data science. Most cutting-edge machine learning libraries are in Python and you will hardly find a job posting for a data science job without Python as one of the requirements.
However, Python is used in a multitude of other areas within computer science:
- Web development
- Game development
- Backend engineering
So, it is a very useful and versatile language to learn for someone wanting to break into programming, data science, or looking to become a developer.
I have been coding in Python for over 4 years, and in this article, I want to explain how I would learn Python if I was starting from zero again.
To start, I would choose an introduction/beginner course that I like the look of or recommendations from another person who I know has good Python skills.
You might have heard me say in one of my previous posts that there is no such thing as the “right” course. While this is definitely true, some courses are generally viewed or rated higher than others, and it is generally a safer bet to go with the popular options.
In reality, any of the top courses will teach you the same things, so don’t worry too much about this. Just pick one and get going!
One course I took to learn Python was the W3Schools tutorial. I like how simple it is and provides you with hands-on exercises for each topic. It also doesn’t take ages to complete, you can probably do the whole course in a week by studying a couple of hours a night.
Completion didn’t mean that I knew everything about Python, but it gave me a view of the lay of the land and I understood the concepts much better.