I'm new to python. I have learnt the basics from learnpythonthehardway.org/book and now I'm unable to understand the codes and libraries method of my favorite projects on github.
What should I do now in step by step manner so that I become capable enough to contribute and hence take part in GSoC no matter how much time it takes?
Some says I should practise python questions on hackerrank and other says I should work on my own project and learn from it. Which should I follow?
If you are just trying to learn Python I know YouTube has a lot of fantastic resources. Since you've already read Learn Python the Hard Way, I would suggest you look for YouTube videos where the host is creating a project (Look for something which interests you), and follow along until you come across something you don't know. Research it, rinse and repeat. As a bonus, you'll end up with some neat Python projects in the end, too.
Another great way to get some Python experience is to find different sources of tutorials. I learned Python from Codecademy, but there are plenty out there.
However, all said, there is simply nothing like figuring things out yourself. Set a goal - think of a project to create - and get as far as you can, and look for as many opportunities to learn as possible. That's my favorite way to learn.
Good luck! :)
As mentioned by #Dylan, YouTube hosts a lot of Python tutorials which are helpful for learning more about Python.
Additionally, I would invest your time in reading some eBooks. They have a wealth of knowledge that can expand your horizons beyond learning the basics of Python and personally I found it to be a huge help in understanding the language. Read these and take some good notes.
Python Cookbook (Second or Third Edition) by David Beazley
Automate
the Boring Stuff With Python by Al Sweigart
A Byte of Python by
Swaroop C.H.
Test-Driven Development with Python by Henry Percival
Real Python for the Web by Michael Herman
Good luck and happy coding!
I use C/C++ language to develop monitor and control software for hardware device for many years. Recently I started to learn Python for some reasons, so I also wondering which way is the best way to study a new language. My learning materials are two books, Learning Python and Programming Python. I think the language's foundational concepts are really important. As my experience in C/C++, the most frequent book I use in my work is the first one I studied in University, as that book focused on the foundational concepts. So I think the most important thing is understanding the foundational concepts,and the best way is typing it and test it by your hand, not only seeing the example.
Related
I'm tired of books and tutorials who walk me through how to print things before I can do anything fun. I want to build simple apps or programs. Any suggestions for where to start so I can make and learn at the same time?
If you're just looking for something to do that will challenge you to start actually using Python rather than reading about it, try the Ruby Quiz. You don't have to use Ruby to create solutions.
Each quiz is a problem that can be scripted (using any language, really). Ideally it'll force you to apply the concepts you've been reading about to "real life" problems.
If you are tired of tutorials, then just start building something. Anything. If you get stuck, glance back over the tutorials, or consult the documentation. I'm a big fan of learning by doing.
A short list of options from off the top of my head:
If you're into web development, Django is a popular python web framework that is very well documented. The Blog app is a popular starting point.
Python itself is pretty well documented. If you're a complete beginner to python AND programming in general, you may want to try something less complex. Pick a random task and try to do it using python:
Read and print the ID3 tags from all your mp3 files using mutagen.
List or download your email using the python imaplib or poplib modules.
Write a zip/unzip utility using zipfile.
Don't be in too much of a hurry, and be realistic. Unless you've got a pile of programming under your belt, you won't be able to jump into a complex project after reading a few tutorials. Patience and practice will get you to the place where you can tackle really interesting projects. Impatience will merely lead to frustration.
Might i suggest pygame http://www.pygame.org/news.html ? If you want to do things with visuals, your not going to get anywhere with the default python modules unless, of course you know how to implement SDL. As stated above in the comments, the tutorials are there for a reason; although they are simple, they are meant to teach you the basics and perhaps, have you think about ideas of implementing such given tools to larger projects. Give pygame I try. You can create a window with lines and shapes in a little as ~10 lines. From there you can expand your knowledge to Object-Oriented programming(which a must for UI) and be on your way to larger projects such as AI, graphics, etc.
P.S. Check this book out http://apress.com/book/view/1590598725. Although you might not want to get into game development, it will teach you some rather useful techniques which may help your research in application development.
Well, I have read several user guides and watched dozens and dozens of video tutorials on how to program with Python, and feel pretty confident about writing simple applications for it. My main point in my question is, where would I be able to learn more advanced programming knowledge about Python?
How simple of applications are you making? Have you gone through the exercises in Google's Python Class? I highly recommend going through those. If you really know what you are doing, you should breeze through them. If not, then you'll be learning some valuable skills and becoming a little more experienced in Python.
After that, it depends on what your end goals are with Python. If you don't have any goals then you should work on setting some goals and making some small applications to develop your skills in the areas that go well with those goals.
Also, a good way to learn more about Python is to try to answer the questions posted on here about Python. Even if you don't find the best answer, reading other people's answers will help you as well as the process of trying to find the answer.
You could try something like Python Cookbook or Python Challenge.
But your question is a little too vague. Why did you learn Python? What kind of problems are you looking at solving? Based on the answer to that, I can direct you to various modules like os, sys, Tkinter, etc
You have given yourself an answer:
and feel pretty confident about
writing simple applications for it
go ahead and write more complex applications!
The issue here is that you do not feel challenged, and you assume that you are done with your basic learning. Just find what to do! Simplify a process (say, file management), retrieve data from Internet (say, the last 25 twitter posts about Python), consolidate your mail clients into a single command line application, etc.
The MOST productive thing you could do (assuming you really don't have problems of your own), is to find an open source Python project (say, Matplotlib) and become a contributor. You will quickly realize that Python is beautiful, but it is a beast nevertheless.
If you still feel unchallenged, contact me and I will send you a ton of stuff to code which, believe me, is not easy.
Good luck!
my favorite way in learning python is ( learning through projects ).
put yourself a goal , like a software for example ( 6 years ago when i started to learn python i picked a messenger . so i had to read more about sockets, network programming , and interfaces libraries ) . start with it , look for examples and resources to learn more . then do it.
the key is NOT TO GIVE UP and keep trying and searching until you make it .
. this can be fastest and the most efficient way in learning any programming language .
good luck ;)
If you like puzzles, you might check out Project Euler. It has a variety of interesting puzzles (some easy, some much harder) that take some logic and programming to solve. (Often you have to find a clever way to solve them, since brute-force methods will take forever.)
If you're at all interested in web development you might look into Django. It's a very nice web framework that lets you use Python; it's mature and quite powerful.
I also second Arrieta's suggestion of finding an open-source Python project and looking into getting involved. You can find a list of such projects on GitHub, freshmeat, and SourceForge, among others.
I'm a newbie to programming and I've decided to start with Python. Just curious though, is it enough/recommended to learn Python from online tutorials or from books? I want to go further than simple "Hello World!" programs. I'm not sure if books will actually teach you how to make more advanced programs.
One example is Exif-py. How do you even start programming a program like this? Do you just sit down and start writing the code, or do you have to search for APIs or anything? I went through the code briefly and it all looked alien to me.
I'm not really sure how to express my questions into words, so do check back because I'll edit my question if the right words come to me.
Well, I learnt all my Python from online sources (not just tutorials, but reference documentation, blog posts and other texts). It's certainly possible, although some people prefer the "guided" way a book teaches you, particularly people new to programming (at that point I had already been programming for years).
To create a program such as Exif.py, you would first have to know what you must do in broad terms BEFORE starting to program. You would study the EXIF format, then figure out how that is put into the image files, then you would have to formulate that in terms of the language you're using (in this case, Python). This usually requires that you're already familiar with it, otherwise it'll be a fairly slow process.
I'd suggest starting with simpler programs to begin with, or maybe follow a book such as Dive Into Python (free online), seeing as you're new to programming, and need to not only learn the language, but to think like a programmer.
The tutorials are there to teach you the language syntax and the standard library, not really on how to solve a particular programming problem. Think of what you learn there as your toolbox.
I think I understand what you are saying. You want to break above and beyond the simple applications and write your own stuff, right? Well, first you need to figure out what it is you want to make. Then comes the hard part; how are you going to make it? I'd suggest starting by trying to break it down into a number of small simple problems instead of tackling it as one large problem.
If you are trying to find examples of larger projects, I'd suggest looking at the Python Cheeseshop (package index) and download a few packages you've heard of to see how they did it. Also, people often post handy pieces of code on their personal blogs and that shows up on PlanetPython.
If stuff like recursion, modules, classes, iteration, exceptions, dictionaries, are indeed new to you, I suggest How to Think Like a Computer Scientist in Python (lovingly abbreviated as ThinkCSPy in the community ;-).
It is a bit outdated - for best results, use Python 2.6 or lower, but then again 3.0 is not that different.
EDIT: If ThinkCSPy has little to teach you, try Dive Into Python. It's advanced and pretty "real-world", but step-by-step.
If by 'newbie to programming' you mean that you just started it last week or something along the lines, then maybe you might want to give the MIT OpenCourseWare Introduction to Computer Science videos (and homework!) a bit of your time.
The opencourse covers the syntax of the Python language, some helpful hints and general do's and don'ts that apply to any programming paradigm.
Though, if by 'newbie to programming', that you already know the basic concepts you need to start writing basic programs (like adding, subtracting, multiplying, logical operations, functions etc).
If so, Project Euler is particularly good for exercising that cranial muscle in problem solving via programming, though most of the problems on the site require you at also have knowledge of mathematics (and if you don't, at least know how to google).
Just remember, if you get stuck on anything don't get put down! It's all part of learning! If you're really stuck, search SO!
There are a few very good online resources:
The Python Tutorial.
Dive Into Python. Python from novice to pro.
Code Like a Pythonista: Idiomatic Python
Another list of resources: Essential Python Reading List.
Most Python books I've seen so far are "not that good" - but that depends
on your background / prior knowledge about Python and programming.
You study the EXIF format, study the GIF/JPEG format, open the binary file, scan it and get the data out.
I'm currently reading a great book called 'Programming Collective Intelligence' by Toby Segaran (which i highly recommend)
The code examples are all written in Python, and as I have already learnt one new language this year (graduating from VB.net to C#) i'm not keen to jump on another learning curve.
This leaves my with the issue of translating the python examples into C#.
Question is: How critical is it that the code stay in python? Are there thing in python that I can't do in a normal managed statically typed language?
One challenge you'll find is that not only are the algorithms implemented in Python, but the book makes extensive use of Python libraries like BeautifulSoup, Numpy, PIL, and others (see appendix A).
I doubt there are any specifics of the algorithms that you couldn't port to another language, but you'll have trouble working through the exercises. Also, to translate the code, you'll have to learn Python at least a little bit, no?
I suggest you just dive in and learn Python. You can use IronPython if you have any concern about interoperability with your C# projects.
You can do the same things in all Turing-complete languages. Here is an example for rendering a Mandelbrot fractal in SQL. The example shows: Even if you can use any language, the effort will be different.
So my guess is that the code will become much longer since Python is so flexible and open.
I suggest translating them to C#. I have been porting chapter 2 "Recommendations" to VB.Net. Along the way I'm learning Python as a side-effect. Toby does some amazing things with Python lists.
Dealing with the the extra Python libraries is another story. Ndelicious is a close match to pyDelicious, but it is missing a few key features (popular posts!).
Obligatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/353/
I know you explicitly say you don't want to learn Python (this year), but translating the Python examples to C# will definitely be a much steeper curve. Just dive in!
The book is about algorithms, not the details of programming, and the language of choice is just to make the examples concrete. As the author says, "The code examples in this book are written in Python... but I provide explanations of all the algorithms so that programmers of other languages can follow." (p. xv)
Python is a great language and easy to learn, but I suspect the difficulties in applying ideas from the book will not be in the translating of the code to another language or set of libraries, but in understanding the ideas and modifying the code to suite your needs. I think there are two main reasons to stay with a language you're familiar with: 1) when your code doesn't work, if you're writing in an unfamiliar language, you won't know where to start looking for errors, e.g. if you're like most people you'll even start wondering if it's due to a bug in Python, which it won't be, but you'll wonder and it will distract. 2) There are just natural limits to how much you can remember in a certain length of time; and learning a language at the same time will give you twice as much to remember.
It depends though how well you know C#, and what you lose by leaving it.
Python seems to be to AI programming what LISP was for for many decades. Russel/Norvig's famous book AI: A Modern Approach also provides lots of examples in Python.
I'm a pretty inexperienced programmer (can make tk apps, text processing, sort of understand oop), but Python is so awesome that I would like to help the community. What's the best way for a beginner to contribute?
Add to the docs. it is downright crappy
Help out other users on the dev and user mailing lists.
TEST PYTHON. bugs in programming languages are real bad. And I have seen someone discover atleast 1 bug in python
Frequent the #python channel on irc.freenode.net
Build something cool in Python and share it with others. Small values of cool are still cool. Not everyone gets to write epic, world-changing software.
Every problem solved well using Python is a way of showing how cool Python is.
I guess one way would be to help with documentation (translation, updating), until you are aware enough about the language. Also following the devs and users mail groups would give you a pretty good idea of what is being done and needs to be done by the community.
I see two ways of going about it: working on Python directly or working on something that utilizes Python
Since you're a beginner, you're probably hesitant to work on the core Python language or feel that you can't contribute in a meaningful way, which is understandable. However, as a beginner, you're in a good position to help improve documentation and other items that are essential to learning Python.
For example, the Python tutorial is less of a tutorial (in the standard sense) and more of a feature listing, at least in my opinion. When I tried to learn from it, I never got the feeling that I was building up my knowledge, like creating an application. It felt more like I was being shown all the parts that make up Python but not how to put them together into a cohesive structure.
Once I became more comfortable with the language (mostly through books and lots of practice), I eventually wrote my own tutorial, trying to provide not only the technical information but also lessons learned and "newbie gotchas".
Alternatively, you can contribute to the Python world by using Python in programs. You can contribute to projects already established, e.g. Django, PyGame, etc., or you can make your own program to "scratch an itch". Either way, you not only build your knowledge of Python but you are giving back to the community.
Finally, you can become an advocate of Python, encouraging others to learn the language. I kept suggesting to my supervisor at my last job to use Python rather than Java when a considering what to use for a new project. I tell everyone I know about the joys of Python and encourage them to give it a try. I convinced the administrator of a computer forum I frequent to create a section for Python. And, as I already said, I wrote a tutorial for Python and I'm working on a new one for wxPython.
There are many ways you can contribute to Python that aren't necessarily programming related. As your programming skills grow, you may want to move further into code contributions. But you may gain more satisfaction by helping others find the same joy you found in Python.
If you aren't up to actually working on the Python core, there are still many ways to contribute.. 2 that immediately come to mind is:
work on documentation.. it can ALWAYS be improved. Take your favorite modules and check out the documentation and add where you can.
Reporting descriptive bugs is very helpful to the development process.
Get involved with the community: http://www.python.org/dev/
Start by contributing to a Python project that you use and enjoy. This can be as simple as answering questions on the mailing list or IRC channel, offering to help with documentation and test writing or fixing bugs.