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Kara Luton
Kara Luton

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Beginner Python Resources Recommended by the Tech Community

Besides the occasional dive into PHP, I've only ever worked with JavaScript. I went to a bootcamp for front end engineering and work as a UI engineer so I've never really had the need to look into any other languages. Lately, I've been interested in learning more about Python so I sent out the following tweet and received some great resources about where to begin!

Here are some of the beginner-friendly Python resources that were recommended to me.

Free College Courses

edX's Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python
This is a 14-16 hour/week course that lasts 9 weeks and is provided by MIT. The course is free but you can pay $75 for graded exams and assignments as well as a certificate.

Carnegie Mellon University's Fundamentals of Programming
By the end of the course you'll be able to read, write, design and debug Python code.

Online Resources

The Modern Python 3 Bootcamp
The course includes 29.5 hours of videos as well as downloadable resources, over 121 articles and 135 coding exercises. Udemy courses regularly go on sale so keep an eye on this one if you're interested in taking it!

Real Python
Various tutorials that allow you to learn Python from the ground up.

Python Crash Course by Traversy Media
Covers Python basics in an hour and a half.

Books

Learn Python the Hard Way by Zed Shaw
You'll work through 52 coding exercises when reading through this book. It also includes a DVD with 5+ hours of teaching.

Automate the Boring Stuff with Python by Al Sweigart
You'll learn how to write programs that take minutes to complete what normally would take hours by hand. No prior coding experience is necessary before reading!

Dive Into Python 3 by Mark Pilgrim
Each chapter starts with a real code sample which is broken down and explained.

Streams

Learning Python from Scratch with Brian Clark and Cecil Phillip
Brian and Cecil stream every Wednesday starting around 11 am ET where they document their journey learning Python.


Have another great beginner-friendly Python resource? I'd love if you left it in the comments below!

Be sure to follow me on Twitter for lots of posts about tech, and if I'm being honest, lots of posts about dogs too.

Top comments (10)

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prahladyeri profile image
Prahlad Yeri

Automate the boring stuff is simply amazing. Its full of simple and innovative python tricks and applications, its a must read for anyone new to the python world.

Apart from that, nothing beats practical experience working on open source projects. If you really want to dive deep into python as a programmer (not someone who teaches or just blogs about it), then create a project on github (however small or mundane, it doesn't matter) and start coding.

The small and mundane things like packaging and releasing builds on PyPi, writing unit tests using PyTest and generating documentation using Sphinx and ReadTheDocs will teach you something of real and practical value.

I know it sounds a lot, but you'll get it all in no time once you dive into it and there is no better way to learn python than programming and contributing to open source projects!

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ama profile image
Adrian Matei • Edited

Hey Kara,

Thanks for the resources. There's also an awesome python list at github.com/vinta/awesome-python. You can browse them all and more at bookmarks.dev/search?q=python and add the category you are interested in in the search.

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aadibajpai profile image
Aadi Bajpai

To be honest I think the official docs and HOWTOs are really underrated. I found it to be the best source for learning regex and argparse which are pretty common yet useful topics.

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uminer profile image
Moshe Uminer

Full Stack Python has excellent references to topic specific material.

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karaluton profile image
Kara Luton

Ohh, thank you!

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elcotu profile image
Daniel Coturel

Hi Kara,
Thanks for this post.
I'm currently learning Python so this will be very useful.
Saludos,

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karaluton profile image
Kara Luton

I’m so glad!

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rhymes profile image
rhymes • Edited

The official Python tutorial is really good

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