At the start of 2021 it is time to look back at one year of Python Friday. Am I still on track? What worked? And what would I make different?
This post is part of my journey to learn Python. You can find the other parts of this series here.
What was the goal?
In Python Friday #1 I wrote this about my motivation to learn Python:
I have these three reasons to learn Python and not any other language:
- It is nearly 4 years since I spend time learning a new language.
- I want to understand the Python code in the projects at work.
- Python is the most important language for machine learning.
With the blog series Python Friday, I enforce a deadline on myself so that I keep learning enough to create a blog post at the end of every workweek. I hope this will help me focus on learning and prevent me from getting too distracted along the way.
Where do I stand now?
My self-imposed goal of writing every week I work was for me a great help to stay on track. 2020 was a crazy year. Having that post due on Friday was motivating enough to spend some time during the week to learn one new thing about Python that I could write about. To cover my holidays, in which I also took a break from learning Python, I had to write more posts in the weeks before. After 30 posts every week I did not want to break that streak.
Today I know quiet a bit about Python that I may have easily missed if I had used the same process to learn a new language as I did with Ruby. I still have high hopes that this approach will make a difference in a year or two when I can go back to my posts to refresh my memory.
The benefits I got so far are good enough to understand the Python code at work and offer suggestions on improving it. There were a few new technologies introduced before the Christmas holidays that I have to learn to keep up. It definitely does not get boring at this end.
I am at the last stretch of a machine learning course that took a lot of time to complete. I have some ideas to put that knowledge into action and if I can do that, it will be a valuable source for more blog posts.
What comes next?
I have a few more posts about testing in my drafts folder that I will publish in January. The next big topic will be about persisting data in a database using SQLAlchemy. Along the way I expect some posts about processing Excel files and dates.
What would I do differently?
My biggest problem with learning Python was to find good tutorials for people who already know how to code but are new to Python. There are plenty of tutorials to learn programming using Python, but not so many that help you to explore Python when you can write code already. The more I know about Python, the more is this problem shifted towards explaining concepts and not just syntax. To get things done is copy this line and paste it here enough. If you want to learn, you want to know why that line and not any other one?
The most useful resource I found so far are the courses at TalkPython. It took me far too long to buy “The Everything Course Bundle” and if I had to start over, I would buy it right at the beginning.
What topics interest you?
Are there any particular topics you would like me to cover as part of the Python Friday series? If so, please leave a comment.