Learning Python - are you?

#1

So my latest project out of many is to learn python…

I’m wondering if there is anyone here in the the Makerspace community that is doing the same that would be interested in creating small python challenges for each other?

I’m using teamtreehouse.com to learn and I have to say that I’m pretty impressed with how simple python is compared to swift which I tried to learn about a year back.

Anyway that’s My current project. So far I have created a hang man type game, a shopping list application and a few other number ones.

My end goal is to be able to use python in many pi projects I have in mind to create in the future. I know i’m a long way away from that tho…

#2

Have you seen Project Euler? It’s leaning towards the mathematical but sets challenges.

#3

No I have not… I’ll go give it a look now. Thanks

#4

I just started a short Python project on my job and might end up doing Python dev for ~6 months so happy to help out/look over stuff for anyone. I’ll try and think of some fun challenges that are nice and Pythonic

#5

An alternative to project euler I like is https://www.codewars.com/. They’re more programming oriented and usually very short, so it’s better for becoming familiar with the languages/standard libraries than math.

They’re not so good if you want to do larger projects and learn how to structure entire applications, but you might find it interesting for the time being.

#6

I have been programming with Python for a while, although always learning. I second the recommendation for codewars.com if you are new to Python, or to programming (codewars.com enables you to use a wide range of languages). There you can complete exercises of graded difficulty, set by members of the site. Once you have a working solution, you can upload it to the site (which is checked for correctness automatically, of course) and your solution becomes visible to everyone else, and you can also see others’ solutions to the exercise.

To progress my own learning, I would like to get started in creating larger applications.

#7

There’s a lot to love about Python. I’ve seen its efficacy from small scripts to a server side app to bespoke low-level craziness.

(A lot to love about swift too, but that’s a nerdier, future payoff conversation. Although I wish Python adopted the function-calls-read-as-English paradigm of swift. That’s such an obvious win)

#8

Im currently doing a udacity nanodegree on machine learning which uses numpy,pandas and tensorflow stuff. It’s quite fun. Beside stating that fact I have nothing else to contribute to this thread, bit if we bump into each other at the space some time a chat would be welcome.

course:

#9

Hey
Most 3D apps like Maya, Houdini etc have python scripting functionality, libraries.
I found learning coding by doing 3D stuff like particle systems, flocks great
cos u got a visual result. 3D can get quite involved fairly easy so I guess this is
from my perspective.

#10

I’m currently using /learning Python at work. But it’s mostly pandas/numpy stuff for data analysis. I mainly use stackoverflow; have learnt a lot from that after initially using codecademy.

Always interested in learning new stuff and ways of using it.

#11

The mention of Project Euler tickled my fancy and I’ve had a little go here and there over the past week as a way to get used to the basic grammar of Swift. I’d be interested in hearing other people’s opinions, I kinda have the sense that it’s not a good way to learn maths, and it’s not a good way to learn programming.

I do like the increase in capability and efficiency here though…

Euler 5 (answer, execution time in s)
(232792560, 6.7607973509999999)                <--- Brute force
(232792560, 0.15376584500000001)               <--- Brute force, optimised
(232792560, 0.00012444100000000001)            <--- Maths!
(232792560, 2.7022999999999999e-05)            <--- Maths! Optimised
(232792560, 6.0410000000000003e-06)            <--- Maths! Optimised further
(337293588832926264639465766794841407434000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000, 5.7021000000000002e-05) <--- Maths and Swift's decimal type finding an impossibly big common factor, quickly. Nice.
#12

My experience with most of the online “programming games/tasks” is this - it doesn’t really teach you a useful application of either skill. They are almost always either string manipulation or numerical problems. That said, what do you think of Swift? I wrote an iOS app at work a few months ago and thought Swift was a nice language, I just wish the IDE and tooling had some more maturity (XCode is the worst IDE I’ve ever used, like even Atom is better)

#13

I’d stick in Python all day and every day if I could, but there’s a time when C or C++ is needed, and Swift promises to outdo them for that. So aside from the Apple ecosystem, it’s the hoped for future payoff of Swift that has my willingness to invest.

In terms of Swift today, XCode playgrounds hasn’t been as nice as I hoped. I had to compile my playground code using swiftc in the terminal to actually get one of my brute force solutions to finish in seconds rather than tens of minutes, and it’s too easy to break the auto-complete / documentation-as-you-write-your-code.