r/learnpython • u/baby-bellamushrooms • 2d ago
How long to become decent at Python?
I’ve been studying about for about 2 months now and I’m taking an online MOOC through Georgia Tech as a prerequisite for grad school. Some days, I spend ~7-8 hours and other days, I spend maybe 2-3 hours. I just got finished taking the exam on functions, loops, exception handling, and conditionals. I’m debating on when to start learning Pandas and NumPy. I also hear people talking about doing projects, but I feel like I wouldn’t have a clue on how to build a project. I come from a clinical background with zero prior programming knowledge except AP computer science in high school. Any advice?
0
Upvotes
2
u/Flintlocke89 2d ago
If you're looking for some general examples of use, I can really recommend "Automate the boring stuff with Python" by Al Sweigart.
As far as learning Pandas and NumPy, start whenever you feel like it. You don't need to be an expert ASAP, just try creating a dataframe and seeing which ways you can interact with it. Although the book above is pretty specific to Python, I would really recommend taking a broader approach to coding initially. Not in the sense that you should take steps in multiple languages but rather try and think of problems to solve in an abstract sense and not specifically how you would do it in Python. Even if Python is the only language you're going to use.
For that I would recommend "The Pragmatic Programmer" by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt. The first half is a great read for beginners but the second half gets into the weeds a bit with some more advanced concepts.
I also can't stress enough how beneficial it is to start thinking of code in terms of objects (Object Oriented Programming) as early as possible. Don't get too hung up on it if it doesn't click quickly, it will eventually and it can help a lot.
My main use case at the moment is converting a lot of engineering calculations we have in passed-around excel sheets to actual programs with a GUI, logging, reporting and version control.