The best steps to learning Python?

I'm more a jump into it kinda person... no use learning perfect styles...etc if you have NFI how to even make simple loops/if statements.

IMO...
1. Find a small project (say automating a simple daily task).
2. Install Python and research what libraries you'll need.
3. Get a basic example from that library's manual and customise it to suit your needs.
4. Do a web search for basic if/else functionality and how to make strings/arrays. Fiddle around with them until you end up going 'man this is getting really messy as my app gets bigger, but I know what I'm doing now!!!'

THEN... go back and read the style guides...etc because you'll understand them now. Rewrite your code if you need to and polish it so that it's clean and meets the guidelines.

TBH... you can't really break the guidelines too badly with python because the code won't work if you don't use the correct indents...etc (whereas just about every other language ignores indents...etc.) Python sorta forces you to use best practice for formatting and you'll learn about it pretty quickly because the errors will tell you where you went wrong.

My last advice is that perfection depends upon your goal. Why learn python? If it's just to cheat in some browser-based game or do some basic web automation then not a lot of skill is needed and you'll probably just want simple beginner's quality code that gets the job done. If you're grtting paid $500 an hour to code up enterprise-grade systems then obviously the quality of your code's goong to need to be better (unless you're intentionally trying to code yourself into a job... which TBH is probably what 1/2 the guys who pretend they are best practice perfectionists on here do in the real world.)

/r/learnpython Thread