I've been "trying" to learn #Python for over a year now & continue to find myself easily discouraged when concepts that are presented as "basic" are far from it for me. Eventually my frustration wins out & I take a long break, only to try again & restart the learning all over.
Beyond try, try, try, try, try again... any other hot tips? If it would help, what excites me is being able to code a Discord bot to do... stuff. If the "basics" are too much, is that goal too lofty?
@_chrismay Today it feels like there's a little light on the horizon. So many provided context & recommendations that I have much to consider and contemplate.
Yet the entire conversation that came out of my post was a welcome one - I never expected to get much of a reply, let alone many.
@lyteforce I wouldn't say it's too lofty, but it's a challenge.
I started smaller by writing Python programs that would create folders and files for each new project.
That gave me the confidence to do something more, and eventually let me build websites.
Even that took about 3 years, but I only did it occasionally and on the side.
I imagine there will be a lot of frustrations for a little while until you have a breakthrough in your understanding. Then some things will get easier for a bit.
@_chrismay When starting, how did you measure your progression? I presume incremental goals that built upon each other?
I'd love to start small and experience the "hit" of success, yet previous advice I've received is to define the goal and build to it - which for a structured learner like me feels like chaos.
@lyteforce I don't do well at defining goals. I was inspired by other people I saw in social media, which is where my project template idea came from. It failed more times than it worked for a few months, but each time I learned and grew. Plus, it was so much fun when it did work.
I was also hungry for information, so I followed blogs on RSS and watched any videos that seemed interesting, and followed people on social media.
A lot went over my head, but eventually, things started sticking.
@lyteforce Also, whenever I learned something, I told other developers around me. Half the time they didn't know it, and half the time they were able to give me better perspective on how to use the new idea.
@davidcampey I've actually followed that tutorial & gotten everything to work. I then tried to reverse-engineer to understand what everything does and how/why it does what it does... and that's where the struggle begins.
I get that this is likely beyond the scope of what I can do in the beginning, yet it's exactly what would excite me to continue to work on if I could find that happy medium somewhere in between.
@davidcampey@lyteforce My thoughts exactly. The information presented in this thread so far is fairly abstract, and (taking myself as an example of the kind of person who might be willing/able to help you) it's really hard for me to offer anything useful without getting more details to form a more complete picture of what you find frustrating.
@diazona@davidcampey Apologies for the abstract approach. My post was more a generic "where to begin" than a "here's what's wrong right now."
I guess if I were to think about what I'm looking for, it's the different approaches people have used to learn the language in the hope that it will help me find the approach that works for me.
@pythonbynight@lyteforce@davidcampey That makes a lot of sense. I feel like I have little of value to offer here, but to whatever extent I can say anything useful, it would be some subset of that. ☝️
FWIW the thing that was most helpful to me was finding something fun to build. My motivation to learn about different "pieces" of Python was trying to make my fun thing work. But you (Chris) say you've already got that, and it's not doing enough for you, so maybe you need something else. 🤷
I actually think I need to consider the possibility “something else.” Not to suggest a Discord bot isn’t the “destination,” yet are their stops along the way there that would be fun to see, which in turn contribute to the entire trip? I need to ponder that a bit.
@lyteforce@diazona@davidcampey I initially started learning python thinking that I could build a system that would recommend me cool philosophy/science fiction media based on other scifi films I liked. It was way over-ambitious. However, I ended up building a web scraper and a learning some machine learning basics (I had zero experience in either). I got about half-way and rerouted... decided to learn how to build a web application so it could actually "do" something... it turned into a blog.
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