“Learning Python is easy.” Well, I don’t think so because I faced a lot of hurdles while trying to grab each piece of this language.
You definitely can learn the basics of a programming language without putting yourself into too many troubles. The same thing goes for Python as well. The basic syntaxes of Python make it easy to understand. But these are just the baby step. Now, the problem with the people is – once they learn to walk few steps, they end up imagining themselves doing spacewalking, but, unfortunately, that spacewalk ends up taking them into a void. The cosmic object they were looking for disappears beyond the event horizon.
To be honest, I think, if you give proper time and maintain regularity as well as punctuality, you can learn Python, but, it will take some time. Programming is tough. And most importantly, learning a language doesn’t mean knowing a few syntaxes, it’s about how well you understand that particular programming language.
The best thing you can do is to start treating a programming language in the same way you treat the girl you like. Be gentle, be easy, and be determined, it will take some time, but, your continuous effort will not go in vain. I’m sure this works when it’s about learning a language.
Now, let’s talk about some course and books which I used, to learn Python. To be honest, I don’t really remember all the books or, the course that I went through, but, I do remember some of the important ones.
First of all, I’ll mention the names of books in the order of level of difficulties. Most of the books are free. By the way, I did not read many books, but, here is a list –
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A Byte of Python
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Python Crash Course
- Author: Eric Matthes.
- Source: Download the PDF.
- Estimated Time: 35 days.
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Think Python – How to Think Like a Computer Scientist.
- Author: Allen Downey.
- Source: Download the PDF.
- Estimated Time: 20 days.
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Learning Python
- Author: Mark Lutz
- Source: Download the PDF.
- Estimated Time: 65 days.
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Fluent Python
- Author: Luciano Ramalho.
- Source: Download the PDF.
- Estimated Time: 60 days.
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Python CookBook
- Author: David Beazley & Brian K. Jones.
- Source: Download the PDF.
- Estimated Time: 75 days.
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Effective Python
- Author: Brett Slatkin.
- Source: Download the PDF.
- Estimated Time: 56 days.
Above is the list of books which I’ve studied during my getting-to-know Python period. I think it took me a year to finish those books because I was learning Python from different online courses, as well.
To be honest, it’s not your job to finish all the books which I mentioned, but, I’d recommend you read the first three books. Daily, if you spend around 3 to 4 hours learning to code, it will take only 2 months to finish The Byte of Python, Python Crash Course, and Think Python.
One last book that I’d recommend you finishing is Learning Python by Mark Lutz. It’s a brilliant book written for the beginners and the intermediate Python programmers. It’s heavy and contains really good material, which will be helpful if you’ve already finished the first three books from the list which I mentioned.
I’m not asking you to stick to the books, and that’s why I’ll even mention the sites that I used during my learning phase of Python.
After finishing the first three books, I switched to the Google’s Python Class to Codecademy’s Python Course, and later to the bunch of Udmey Courses. Meanwhile, I continued reading the books and ended up finishing them all. It took almost 1.5 years for me to learn Python in the way I wanted to learn.
One important thing is – implementation. If you are just reading the books and refusing to implement the concepts that you are grasping, you’ll end up learning nothing useful. Books are wonderful. They are going to build a solid foundation of the programming language, but, in the end, it’s all about implementation.
Use GitHub, use StackOverflow, Google everything, read codes, force yourself to read codes, make changes in the projects, break the projects, scrap sites, build bots, automate everything you can, learn to contribute, write simple blog posts, read a bunch of blogs, learn, and finally create.
This is how you’ll learn Python. It will take some time but it’s worth spending each, and every minute learning to code, either it’s Python, or JavaScript, or any other Programming language.
In my case, GitHub played a really important role.
Hope this helps!
Rishi Giri 