python tutorial recommendation

[Tom_nerd]

hey guys,

 

I'm mostly a hardware guy but would be really interested in programming. I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for good tutorials? 

 

thanks in advance,

Tom

[Slottr]

Codecademy has a good introduction

But try to find some projects to work on.

 

Build a rock paper scissors game, build a basic calculator, etc

[TheBean]

Just now, Tom_nerd said:

hey guys,

 

I'm mostly a hardware guy but would be really interested in programming. I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for good tutorials? 

 

thanks in advance,

Tom

have you done any programming at all yet? if you have not, I would suggest rather starting with C++. its more advanced and seems more complex at the start, but as you go on, it will become much better as it is more in line with other languages so it might help you advance your career in the future if that is something you care about. 

[steelo]

Python is a really, really good starting point. It's one of the simpler languages to learn and the fundamentals will transition to other languages.

 

codecademy is where I learned the basics. They offer free courses that are a couple of weeks and teach you the essentials, like conditionals, loops, functions, etc. I'm still a noob, but my recommendation is to find a project that would interest you and try to make it! That's how I learned. Start with something really simple - maybe a paper, rock, scissors game and then transition to something like hangman (which I found to be pretty challenging as a beginner) Once you get the hang of it, try transitioning to object oriented programming...it's a big jump (it took me forever to get the hang of it and I still struggle) but once it clicks, it's pretty cool stuff!

 

There was a 'space wars' game in the 80's-90's that I always loved...I think it was created by an independent 'hobbyist' programmer, so 30 years later, it's nowhere to be found. Instead, I took the codecademy course, watched countless youtube videos on simple game creation and pieced that together to make a pretty archaic, but cool space game. It took a good month for me to get everything working...I'm sure a more seasoned programmer would have been able to finish in a few days but it's a great feeling when you get something to work! I also created a text message reminder using a rpi 3 and Tkinter where I input a message reminder and set a date I would like to send it. I created a cron job which automatically checks at the beginning of every day whether there is a text reminder to be sent. Finally, there was also a 'stranger things' Halloween project I made using a rpi that picks random words and illuminates lights that correspond to individual letters to display a message (like on the show)...this was one of my first projects.

 

There are a ton of projects that one can create with python...just find what interests you and try to make it!

 

 

[Hackentosher]

I watched this video and it was really helpful to learn the basic syntax of python and how it differed from other languages I've learned before. It's a lot very quickly, but I think Derek does a good job of breaking it down into an understandable video. Definitely have google ready to search for terms and extra information on the subjects he covers. 

 

That said, I firmly believe that the best way to learn a new skill is to find a problem that needs said skill to be solved. This is kinda hard with programming languages because basically any language can be used to do basically anything, but what's great about python is it can be used as a quick and dirty way to do a whole lot of things. Maybe a web scraper could be a good first project?

 

[awakecard]

I would recommend: https://pythonprogramming.net/ 

he has videoes, full transcripts and code for every lesson, lots of different topics. 

 

then once to want to start testing your self https://www.codewars.com/

have some small challents to test your self with differnt skill levels.

 

if your looking for an IDE then look at pycahrm edu which has some built in tutorials: https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm-edu/

 

hope this helps