A path back to coding

I had heard the buzz around Python, so when I decided to have a try at coding again I thought this would be a good place to start. Initially I wanted to see if I even had the knack for it still, so I did a short course on YouTube.

This course was 6️⃣ hours long but took considerably longer to go through. It's a really popular course and covered all the basic concepts. A cool extra was that it also touched on how Python is used in these three areas:

🌻 Automation
🌻 Machine Learning
🌻 Web Development

This gave me a taste of what the language had to offer and if I wanted to carry on learning. I really liked Python, it's an intuitive language to learn, has tons of support and some really powerful functionality. Most importantly it is being used in some emergent industries like Data Science, so it's a really good skill to have.

💾 A structured approach

Now that I had a good overview of Python, I wanted to learn it properly. I did this through Udemy. It's easy to find a good course on this platform, there are lots to choose from. They have reviews and you can watch intro videos to some of the session to get a feel of the delivery style. And best of all they always have offers and you can usually do a comprehensive course for as little as £20.

Complete Python Developer in 2021: Zero to Mastery

This is the course that I did and it was 30 hours long. It covered all the basic functionality and also extended features. Added to this were full sections on the above mentioned areas. All this is run alongside coding tasks so you get the best learning experience.
Be warned, it takes a long time to do the course properly. It took me several months, but at the end I really felt that I could use Python. The exercises are really important to work through properly, this is where you really grow and can start to feel your knowledge building.

While doing the course I set up a GitHub account to save my exercises, it helped me to build a picture of my skill set to showcase what I had learnt.

What next ..➡️

So I got to the end of this course and I thought 'What now?' this isn't enough to apply to a job, what type of jobs would I apply for? .. which direction do I take now ❓❓❓

So I decided I needed to choose an area to focus on and went with the area I had enjoyed the most, which was Data Analysis. My next step was another long Udemy course. This one was focused on Data Analysis and Data Science. It was in-depth and detailed, walking through the specific libraries and real life uses of Python in these areas. And the exercises built into a really good portfolio of my skills.

Python for Data Science and Machine Learning Bootcamp

By the time I completed this course I was 💫exhausted💫 but I also had a really good grasp of Python and how to use it to analyze data sets and produce visualizations, as well as a good understanding of Data Science modelling.