I'm taking Harvard's CS50 Introduction to Python Programming course and I'm shocked by how ugly my code is.

I'm a beginner and assume that everyone goes through this stage where your code is overcomplicated. But how can I speed up my learning curve and write cleaner, simpler code?

When solving coding problems, I always write my own code first and after I'm sure it does what it needs to do, I go to Bard and ask it to improve it. What I've learned from comparing my code to Bard's version is that my algorithms are too complicated.

With all the shame I have, I will present an example.

Ashamed dog

The following code is part of a function that takes a string entered by a user and checks if the string complies with five different conditions. For the sake of simplicity, I will present the code for only one of these conditions. The condition is: the string can't have numbers in the middle and the leading number can't be a zero.

This is the code I wrote to check this condition:

if any(char.isdigit() for char in input_str):  
        for i in range(len(input_str)):
            if input_str[i].isdigit():
                if input_str[i] == '0':
                    break
                else:
                    number_index= i
                    contains_number = input_str[number_index:]
                    if contains_number[0] != 0 and all(char.isdigit() for char in contains_number):
                        condition_met += 1
                        condition_list.append(6)
                break
    else:
        condition_met += 1
        condition_list.append(6)

and this is Bard's version:

digits = "".join(char for char in input_str if char.isdigit())
    if not digits:  
        condition_met += 1
        condition_list.append(5)
    else:
        if digits[0] != '0' and digits == input_str[-len(digits):]:
            condition_met += 1
            condition_list.append(5)

My code has 15 lines and Bard's code has 8. A lot more concise.

So my question for more experienced programmers is, how can I improve my solving-problem thinking?

I am enjoying a lot learning to code precisely because it teaches you to break down problems into small tasks but I'm shocked to realize that my solutions are complicated and that I can do better at making them simpler. How can I learn to create simpler code?