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Tutorials For Mike Series

June 14th, 2020

I wasn't planning on originally doing this, but I decided to dedicate a few posts to covering python basics that would hopefully be sufficient for someone to either start working in Python on their own or take an online course after and have some basic foundation. I'll call these series Tutorials for Mike, my boyfriend who is about to start learning Python. I'm by no means an expert in Python, but I had to learn it on my own a few years ago with only having limited programming exposure (mainly in R), and I believe the knowledge I have should be sufficient to cover basic concepts in Python.

I think these posts are mainly for learners like me who prefer having some basic understanding of the syntax and concepts before taking an online course or following a book and then build upon that knowledge. I've also noticed some courses cover the syntax in their own user interfaces without letting you experience what it's like coding in the actual Python UI. In others, they start with very basic concepts and then jump to something more complex causing more confusion.

This is how I would recommend to go about learning Python.

  • Read Tutorials for Mike series, try to understand the code and get comfortable with the syntax
  • if what's covered in these posts is clear, proceed to working on your own code and exploring more advanced concepts
  • else I'll post a few links to online resources that would be helpful to further strengthen your knowledge in Python
Here are the links to the posts: Enjoy learning!

Update: I was checking courses on Python, and specialization by U of Michigan seems to be really interesting (especially first and second course) Python for Everybody Specialization. If you prefer books over tutorials, you may try this book Python for Everybody