[Tutor] I learn pretty much everything visually

[Brett C.]

Hi, long time lurker, first time ...replier.

@Azmat

I don't consider myself an python "expert" but I've had some success 
with it and it's now a very valuable tool in my toolbox.  I come from a 
background in system administration, so I knew a little bit of 
scripting. When I started out learning I really just played with it and 
tried to see what I could do - I think my first project was just 
scraping my local weather meteorology website and reformatting the data 
into a table that looked cool in my Linux terminal. Python was the first 
language that really 'clicked' for me.

Like most tools, once you get some familiarity with it, you'll start 
seeing how it can be used to solve problems for you. One of my first 
"major" projects was from when I was playing a video game called Elite 
Dangerous with a bunch of people I met online - everyone was recording 
their contributions to the group's objectives using spreadsheets and 
notepad and I thought to myself "there''s got to be a better way". I 
found that there was a log file that the game produced that I could 
interrogate automatically to compile all that information. It might 
sound silly and I'm sure to some of the people on this list, really 
basic, but I learned so much from that project - how to tail a file, 
record markers so that my program would remember where it left off if it 
was closed and opened again, writing a graphical user interface, 
subprocessing and threading so that events from the game would update 
information in the interface, packaging an application for Windows 
machines... how to handle updates.. how to collaborate with other people 
and use version control tools like Git.

...it hindsight it really got out of hand!

There is so much information on the internet now, so many resources and 
"experts" that it can actually be really intimidating and difficult to 
learn something new.

Like others have said, everyone has their own style and a way of 
learning that works best for them. What worked for me is really just 
coming up with an idea for a project. Start with something simple and 
try and implement it. Python's official documentation (for the most 
part) is pretty approachable. When you hit an issue or are unsure how to 
solve a problem, search the web and see if other people have had similar 
problems. Find out what they did to solve it. Read their code and try 
and understand it, at least conceptually. Then when you finish that 
project, come up with a new one. Add more features to it. If you can 
come up with a solid idea that you're passionate about, the rest will come.

Good luck on your journey!


On 14/6/23 07:44, Alan Gauld via Tutor wrote:
> On 13/06/2023 19:28, Mats Wichmann wrote:
>
>> One of the real problems when there are too many offerings is finding
>> one that is (a) any good and (b) fits your learning style
> ...
>
>> Be nice if we could do a bit better here on tutor, but I, at least,
>> don't see a way (Alan?).
> I don't think it's possible. As you say, there are different
> learning styles. One person's good tutorial is the next
> person's nightmare.
>
> My own tutorial is aimed at a very specific type of learner;
> namely one who wants to learn to program, but is already quite
> experienced around computers - more than a casual web browser,
> social media jockey etc. It suits those from that user-base
> who want a "serious" tutorial. But if they want games,
> medals and flags it's not going to work for them.
>
> Other tutorials target those who just want to learn Python for
> a specific purpose, but that could be as trivial as writing
> macros for some application(Gimp say, or vim) to doing advanced
> science or data analysis at university research level.
>
> I honestly don't think there is any way to categorize tutorials
> for something as general as Python that would be useful to all.
>