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I started reading this book this week in an effort to open up my job prospects down the line. I'm a "technical" Industrial Engineer often serving as a liason be

I started reading this book this week in an effort to open up my job prospects down the line. I'm a "technical" Industrial Engineer often serving as a liason between IT and the business. I can program in VBA and do anything you can name in Excel, but I want to move to a more programming oriented role down the line. I want to be able to do statistical analysis, queries, and just "be better" at breaking down a problem into easily solvable steps. I'm using this book as a "learn the basics" stepping stone, and Project Euler as a list of solvable problems which will let me practice solving problems. After that I'll move into some personal projects I have in mind. Does anyone have additional book or resource recommendations beyond that? I know packages like NumPy and/or SciPy will be useful down the line. * Codecademy feels overpriced at $40/month or $250/year (no refunds for using a partial year). * Google Python class was free but about 10 years old. With the Python 2->3 debacle, I was unsure if fundamentals had changed and hesitant to sink my time into it. * Lynda runs $25 or $40/month but would offer python as well as many other resources. * Udemy - has a number of courses including one by Al, the author of this book. Looked like it'd be a good value, but I'm not sure how much more value the videos add than the book.

jdc 7y ago
I'd recommend edx's CS50x, "Learn Python the Hard Way", "The Pragmatic Programmer" and "Code Complete".
- froindt 7y ago
  These look like great resources, thanks!
rainbowzootsuit 7y ago
You might check with your public library. Ours offers free access to Lynda.com from your home by redirecting through the public library's websitt.
- froindt 7y ago
  My old library provided this, but unfortunately it's not available in my new city.
  - jlgaddis 7y ago
    You can't still use it with your "old library"? It's been a while, but I used to have "library cards" from libraries in all my nearby cities.
    - froindt 7y ago
      The Ames, Iowa city library expires cards on an annual basis, likely because so many students cycle through. Thinking about it now, I think my Lynda access was through Iowa State.
torpfactory 7y ago
I really liked “Problem Solving With Algorithms and Data Structures Using Python”. https://runestone.academy/runestone/books/published/pythonds/index.html https://runestone.academy/runestone/books/published/pythonds...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
samatman 7y ago
check out https://freecodecamp.org https://freecodecamp.org
stOneskull 7y ago
I think exercism.io is great
nikofeyn 7y ago
> "be better" at breaking down a problem into easily solvable steps i highly recommend the courses how to code: simple data and how to code: complex data to supplement your learning to address the quoted goal. don’t be put off by the teaching language or the simplicity at the start. it gets more complicated as you go. the courses teach systematic program design and are based upon the book how to design programs. everybody and their dog knows python. you will not separate yourself by just knowing python. so in the long term, you need other skills beyond “just programming”. and much of the industry is moving to functional-first multiparadigm langauges and more and more concurrent/asynchronous programming. python is a terrible choice for both of those and there is no clear evolution for python in those directions. it is a very outdated language in my opinion, its usage and amount of libraries available for it aside. by all means, learn python, since there are a lot of resources and jobs that need it, but i highly recommend also learning a functional language. my recommendations would be f# (a .net language) and elixir. f# is a very ripe language for automation, probably even more so than python. there are also python courses by MIT on edX you should check out. (actually, they are more computer science courses that use python, but there is an advanced one for using python for scientific applications.)
yhoiseth 7y ago
I like https://teamtreehouse.com/ https://teamtreehouse.com/
bigj0n 7y ago
To offer a different perspective- my favorite way of learning to code has been to find coding puzzles (like codewars.com) and try to tackle those. I ended up learning a lot about control structures, data structures, and logic through there. Programming is inherently creative and few books that I've read have room for creativity. I find it better to discover information than get it from a curriculum.

jdc 7y ago

I'd recommend edx's CS50x, "Learn Python the Hard Way", "The Pragmatic Programmer" and "Code Complete".

froindt 7y ago
These look like great resources, thanks!

rainbowzootsuit 7y ago

You might check with your public library. Ours offers free access to Lynda.com from your home by redirecting through the public library's websitt.

froindt 7y ago
My old library provided this, but unfortunately it's not available in my new city.
- jlgaddis 7y ago
  You can't still use it with your "old library"? It's been a while, but I used to have "library cards" from libraries in all my nearby cities.
  - froindt 7y ago
    The Ames, Iowa city library expires cards on an annual basis, likely because so many students cycle through. Thinking about it now, I think my Lynda access was through Iowa State.

torpfactory 7y ago

I really liked “Problem Solving With Algorithms and Data Structures Using Python”. https://runestone.academy/runestone/books/published/pythonds/index.html https://runestone.academy/runestone/books/published/pythonds...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

samatman 7y ago

check out https://freecodecamp.org https://freecodecamp.org

stOneskull 7y ago

I think exercism.io is great

nikofeyn 7y ago

> "be better" at breaking down a problem into easily solvable steps i highly recommend the courses how to code: simple data and how to code: complex data to supplement your learning to address the quoted goal. don’t be put off by the teaching language or the simplicity at the start. it gets more complicated as you go. the courses teach systematic program design and are based upon the book how to design programs. everybody and their dog knows python. you will not separate yourself by just knowing python. so in the long term, you need other skills beyond “just programming”. and much of the industry is moving to functional-first multiparadigm langauges and more and more concurrent/asynchronous programming. python is a terrible choice for both of those and there is no clear evolution for python in those directions. it is a very outdated language in my opinion, its usage and amount of libraries available for it aside. by all means, learn python, since there are a lot of resources and jobs that need it, but i highly recommend also learning a functional language. my recommendations would be f# (a .net language) and elixir. f# is a very ripe language for automation, probably even more so than python. there are also python courses by MIT on edX you should check out. (actually, they are more computer science courses that use python, but there is an advanced one for using python for scientific applications.)

yhoiseth 7y ago

I like https://teamtreehouse.com/ https://teamtreehouse.com/

bigj0n 7y ago

To offer a different perspective- my favorite way of learning to code has been to find coding puzzles (like codewars.com) and try to tackle those. I ended up learning a lot about control structures, data structures, and logic through there. Programming is inherently creative and few books that I've read have room for creativity. I find it better to discover information than get it from a curriculum.