As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
How to learn python?
Serpent
Sometimes Vancouver, BC, sometimes Brisbane, QLDRegistered User regular
Sometimes Vancouver, BC, sometimes Brisbane, QLDRegistered User regular
Hey! Just wondering what everyone / anyone thinks is the best starting point for learning python?
For reference, I have a strong programming background (pascal C C++ Fortran Java C# etc), advanced mathematics (publishing papers), statistical things (R), cloud (AWS), SQL... data warehousing... machine learning data science blah blah insert more buzzwords here.
I just don't use python cause I never need to cause I can do everything else. Just time to fill the hole. Every once in awhile I came across an application where I feel python would be the appropriate tool to use but I and my team don't have expertise there, and the barrier to entry compared to just using what we already use is higher.
For reference, I have a strong programming background (pascal C C++ Fortran Java C# etc), advanced mathematics (publishing papers), statistical things (R), cloud (AWS), SQL... data warehousing... machine learning data science blah blah insert more buzzwords here.
I just don't use python cause I never need to cause I can do everything else. Just time to fill the hole. Every once in awhile I came across an application where I feel python would be the appropriate tool to use but I and my team don't have expertise there, and the barrier to entry compared to just using what we already use is higher.
0
Posts
Everything I know about python, I learned from a Google search or directly hitting up http://docs.python.org. Skimming the latter should serve all your initial syntax and "can it do X by default" questions.
There isn't much you can't use python for, so for someone as familiar with general programming concepts as you are, I suspect it's more a question of learning what modules are available and identifying targets of opportunity, and not a matter of learning how to write it.
So I would suggest just diving in. Take some task you do, write a script to facilitate some aspect of it, and go from there.
As jars are to dlls, pys are to jars. So you can just keep building on your (or anyone's) existing utility libraries without any linking headaches, and they're just text files you don't ever compile.
If it helps, general usage examples:
- Batch file system operations (batch console operations in general)
- Smoothing over rough spots in a workflow; ex: automating simple tasks prone to human error; checking if simple humans made a task error.
- One-shot data processing; like translating a bunch of disparate data into some standard format to be fed into some other system
- A temporary bridge between different data systems that wind up becoming permanent, because, hey, it works and I have shit to do
- General kludgery, like writing scripts that write other scripts then run those scripts because sometimes ridiculous problems don't deserve non-ridiculous solutions. (Or allow them..)
Except I have no interest in Python.
It also depends on what you're doing with it, as python for data science will use different libraries than application focused python.
Question about application focused python:
Whats the use case for hanging an application on python over Java/C/Etc?
Its developer-facing benefits are clear to me, but, as a delivered product, does it offer any computational advantages over the above?
Well thats a handy coincidence! Why not. *clicky*
Yeah for sure; I use it to do that sort of thing all the time. Check out urllib for a start to webscraping, and/or just type in your problem followed by 'python' and see what stackoverflow has to offer in terms of solutions or other libraries.
That I have only one agree to give...
It seems pretty straight forward, but it's the nested tags that get you. Then theres the tags inside js strings
And all those freak occurences where the text mentions that "b<a and a>c"
*shudders*
lxml is a solid xml/html parser. lXml is your friend.
On scraping
If you're using 2, I read good things about Scrapy; but I don't, so idk.
I was kinda hoping there was a surefire 'this is the best starting point', because I'm poor and time and didn't feel like doing my usual google stuff, but it sounds like there's lots of good resources...
By way of example, I picked up enough for it to be useful in a weekend.
It's basically programming in psuedocode so long as you're doing the basic stuff.
So I guess my suggestion is to pick something you want done, do some basic research on available packages, and chances are you'll be able to do whatever it is you want in less time than you anticipated.
There are some things I found strange like dynamic data types and for loops. Declaring a fixed size nd array was a struggle for example. ++ and -- doesn't increment/decrement a variable. White space is used for grouping. But these things are so minor.
If you have a good deal of experience programming, python should be very easy to learn.
For what it's worth, I teach python in an entry level CS course. I think the dynamic data types (and other things) make it harder as a first language simply because so much is just done for you.