Recently, some colleagues from work as well as friends reached out to me and asked me for . Especially, during COVID-19, many people want to take advantage of their lockdown time by picking up a new skill like coding. advice on how they could learn to code and where to start In this blogpost, I will . Next, I will give you my and finally and show you how I used Python for solving some of my own problems to get you excited to start learning. explain first why you should learn Python favourite resources on how to learn Python introduce some project ideas Why should you pick Python as your first programming language? Simplicity and Code Readability Python’s like in other programming languages scattered all around the code make it a lot easier to write and read Python code. With some simple core concepts and knowledge it is a . Because you do not have to concentrate on how to read or write python code, it makes it easy to learn, use, and remember. intuitive use of indentation instead of other confusing symbols very beginner friendly programming language, where a little bit of Python code will get you quite far Popularity & Versatility Python is , climbing from third place to tie for second in the more popular than ever latest ranking of programming language popularity published by the analyst firm RedMonk Python’s versatility is one of the major reasons for its ongoing popularity. Both as well as academics prefer it as their favorite language for data-crunching large companies like Google, Dropbox, and Instagram all rely heavily on Python: We are often asked about the reasons that particular languages rise or fall in usage, and there are several patterns that have tended to correlate with increased (or decreased) usage. One of those is versatility. Like the language it tied with in this run, Java, Python has continued to find a role for itself in new workloads and use cases, even as it faces more specialized competition in these arenas. This, as much as the language’s general accessibility and ease of use, is one of the most important factors in Python’s ability to not merely survive, but thrive. How to learn Python programming? Since everyone learns differently it is hard to give an all size fits all answer to this question. Since there are so many offerings out there, I will share some of my . favorite resources from which you can try and pick what you like the most 1. Start with the Complete Python Bootcamp: Go from zero to hero in Python 3 from José Portilla on Udemy for 10€ — 20€ I personally liked this course quite a lot as… the course which happen all the time on Udemy. Please If you figure out you do not like the course you can always get your money back up to 30 days after the purchase without any questions being asked! the course is and allows you to . José does a great job at explaining all basic concepts in a clear and easy way. only costs between 10€ to 20€ during discounts do not buy it for the full price! more interactive than a book learn at your own pace However, there are with choosing this course: also some drawbacks Buying it once and having unlimited time to finish the course really . If you feel that you need some more pressure maybe a paid course on another platform like Dataquest, Udacity or alike might be a better fit for youWhile José does a great job at explaining the core concepts, I found . All code is written in a jupyter notebook and I personally feel there’s more fun projects where you can apply your newly learned knowledge. Hence, my second resource suggestion. requires a lot of discipline and dedication to finish most of the capstone projects not super interesting or useful in daily life 2) Apply some of your basic knowledge and concepts with Automate the Boring Stuff from Al Sweigart (free) On this website you will learn how to use Python to allowing you to effortlessly perform useful and impressive feats of automation. write programs that do in minutes what would take you hours to do by hand, I really like Al’s website because… as a business student, I felt that and useful than the ones provided in the Udemy course of JoséAl examples are much more practical focuses on execution and you can really do some cool programs in very little amount of time If you prefer reading and learning, you can also learn all the basic concepts here. 3. Find ideas and learn how to use python more effectively in a business setting on Practical Business Python (free) 4. Learn more about recent Python trends and find sources of inspiration for your own projects and interests through the Talk Python To Me and Python Bytes Podcast (free) Both Podcasts from Michael Kennedy and Brian Okken are a great way to learn and . At the same time they have some very nice beginner friendly Podcasts that are always fun to listen to during your commute or work out. find out more about the latest trends in Python My own top 9 project recommendations resources and libraries to get you started I firmly believe that you and create a small “wow effect”. With Python’s popularity comes a of third-party modules that makes this really easy. enjoy programming the most when you can build scripts or programs that solve your own problems large and extensive standard library (built into the core language) as well as a thriving ecosystem There are already many cool project ideas out there and like this one on or this on GitHub. With the many available options let me briefly present you my top 10 favorite projects and ideas that should get you excited to learn Python: Real Python curated list of aweomse Python project 1. Start Coding in Google Colab Setting up Python on your own computer can be quite painful and annoying. If you want to . It provides a jupyter style notebook hosted on Google’s server. get started right away use Google Colab for free I use Colab for Machine Learning projects since you can use their powerful GPUs and TPUs for resource demanding machine learning projects for free! My use case: 2. Automate Programs with PyAutoGUI PyAutoGUI lets your Python scripts with other applications. Annoyed of having to do the same clicks all over again at work? A perfect use case for this library! control the mouse and keyboard to automate interactions With PyAuto I changed and rearranged +100 PowerPoint slides for my CEMS Business Project. My use case: 3. Grow your Instagram Account with InstaBot Do you want to increase your Instagram Followers or find some interesting stats about your posts? Use this library to . automate your Instagram account I automated and grew one of my instagram accounts from 0 to 83 followers in just two weeks with almost no time spent. My use case: 4. WebScraping with Requests + BeautifulSoup or Scrapy Are your favorite shoes sold out again before you could buy them? Or do you wonder how often a price changes? with Requests and BeautifulSoup. Build a simple Price Monitor I analysed listings on ImmobilienScout to understand whether most of them follow the new Berlin Rental Cap. My use case: 5. Automate Google Chrome with Selenium Like PyAutogui, Selenium allows you to and build some handy automations. Tired of swiping on Tinder, automate it with Selenium! automatically interact with your GoogleChrome Browser I used Selenium to automatically download bank statements from my broker to use PortfolioPerformance to monitor my investments. My use case: 6. Automatically send Emails with smptlib , such as receiving email reminders from your code, send a confirmation email to users when they create an account or use it for some automated reporting. Automate anything related to emails When I was freelancing at the Bertelsmann Stiftung, I built a simple script that grabbed the link and headline of the latest post I published for them on wordpress and send them an automated email about the nw post. My use case: 7. Build awesome Machine Learning/Data Web Apps with Streamlit Streamlit’s open-source app framework is the in a few lines of Python code. All for free. easiest way to create beautiful, performant web apps I used this web framework to deploy a machine learning model that I build that allows everyone to predict a price of used tractors. Checkout my web app . My use case: here 8. Build time series forecasts with Facebook’s Prophet Prophet is a powerful library for open sourced by Facebook- forecasting time series data I used it for fun to download my bank account movements and predict how much money I would have in a few years. Not very realistic or useful but some just for fun playing around! My use case: 9. Sentiment Analysis with VADER VADER (Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner) is a lexicon and rule-based that is specifically attuned to sentiments expressed in social media, and works well on texts from other domains. Check out this built with streamlit. sentiment analysis tool cool demo My use case: I am currently using this library at work to generate more insights from customer feedback through surveys. Extremely, easy to apply and some outstanding results. 10. Analyze and manipulate millions of rows with Pandas Pandas is a fast, powerful, flexible and easy to use open source , built on top of the Python programming language. If you will ever work with data, you will get to love with pandas. data analysis and manipulation tool Whenever Excel or GSheet breaks down and I get annoyed how slow those programs are or if I want to do some more complex data manipulation, I use pandas. Pandas is truly amazing, 10 million rows isn’t really a problem for pandas. The library is highly optimized for dealing with large tabular datasets through its DataFrame structure. My use case: Summary As a business student as it is a very , where a little bit of Python code will get you quite far. and then through automation or other project ideas that solve some of your own problems. With the right projects you will impress other, deliver value to your company and feel motivated to keep on learning and enjoy programming. you should learn Python beginner friendly programming language Start with a simple course to learn the basic concepts immediately pick some projects to apply your newly learned knowledge

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