Learning Python the hard way, Day 1

A recent development at work has been a shift away from WordPress to build our websites. After giving Drupal a shot, we’re about to start a project using Django.

Since I had plans to learn Python regardless(see last year’s Cheffism Episode IV: A New Look), this was the perfect excuse to actually get started on that.

To start off, I finished Codecademy’s Python course. Which, while a decent course, only touches on the bare basics of Python programming and programming in general. A lot of time is spent teaching the “basics” like variable types, loops and functions from almost a beginner programmer standpoint.

Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with this, especially when you’ve picked Python as your first programming language. However, as someone that’s a little more experienced than that it was hardly challenging up to nearly at the end where it introduces Bitwise operators.

And so, to continue my adventures into Python, I have started what I had said I’d be doing: Learning Python the Hard Way. Which, as the introduction describes entails:

With the help of this book, you will do the incredibly simple things that all programmers do to learn a programming language:

Go through each exercise.
Type in each sample exactly.
Make it run.

One major point should be noted though, you’re not supposed to copy + paste code while doing this. And its main intent seems to be to teach by repeatedly doing. Additionally, you’re asked to write comments about each line(and thus, analyse and understand each line) and write down your mistakes as you fix them.

Now, you can call me naive, but how many mistakes can a person make while copying a block of code ad verbatim? Maybe I’m overestimating the average, or as the site puts it intended, reader, but my sheet of mistakes after today is still pretty empty.

Then again, I have only done the first 10 exercises(out of 52) and these seem to mostly cover printing strings and string manipulations through string formatters. And I’m cool with that, repetition is the best way to learn something.

Maybe, once I reach the halfway point it will all be different and I will actually start making mistakes. Maybe. We’ll see.