<story><title>Automate the Boring Stuff with Python (2015)</title><url>https://automatetheboringstuff.com/2e/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>froindt</author><text>I started reading this book this week in an effort to open up my job prospects down the line. I&amp;#x27;m a &amp;quot;technical&amp;quot; Industrial Engineer often serving as a liason between IT and the business. I can program in VBA and do anything you can name in Excel, but I want to move to a more programming oriented role down the line.&lt;p&gt;I want to be able to do statistical analysis, queries, and just &amp;quot;be better&amp;quot; at breaking down a problem into easily solvable steps.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m using this book as a &amp;quot;learn the basics&amp;quot; stepping stone, and Project Euler as a list of solvable problems which will let me practice solving problems. After that I&amp;#x27;ll move into some personal projects I have in mind.&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have additional book or resource recommendations beyond that? I know packages like NumPy and&amp;#x2F;or SciPy will be useful down the line.&lt;p&gt;* Codecademy feels overpriced at $40&amp;#x2F;month or $250&amp;#x2F;year (no refunds for using a partial year).&lt;p&gt;* Google Python class was free but about 10 years old. With the Python 2-&amp;gt;3 debacle, I was unsure if fundamentals had changed and hesitant to sink my time into it.&lt;p&gt;* Lynda runs $25 or $40&amp;#x2F;month but would offer python as well as many other resources.&lt;p&gt;* Udemy - has a number of courses including one by Al, the author of this book. Looked like it&amp;#x27;d be a good value, but I&amp;#x27;m not sure how much more value the videos add than the book.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nikofeyn</author><text>&amp;gt; &amp;quot;be better&amp;quot; at breaking down a problem into easily solvable steps&lt;p&gt;i highly recommend the courses &lt;i&gt;how to code: simple data&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;how to code: complex data&lt;/i&gt; to supplement your learning to address the quoted goal. don’t be put off by the teaching language or the simplicity at the start. it gets more complicated as you go. the courses teach systematic program design and are based upon the book &lt;i&gt;how to design programs&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;everybody and their dog knows python. you will not separate yourself by just knowing python. so in the long term, you need other skills beyond “just programming”. and much of the industry is moving to functional-first multiparadigm langauges and more and more concurrent&amp;#x2F;asynchronous programming. python is a terrible choice for both of those and there is no clear evolution for python in those directions. it is a very outdated language in my opinion, its usage and amount of libraries available for it aside.&lt;p&gt;by all means, learn python, since there are a lot of resources and jobs that need it, but i highly recommend also learning a functional language. my recommendations would be f# (a .net language) and elixir. f# is a very ripe language for automation, probably even more so than python.&lt;p&gt;there are also python courses by MIT on edX you should check out. (actually, they are more computer science courses that use python, but there is an advanced one for using python for scientific applications.)</text></comment>
<story><title>Automate the Boring Stuff with Python (2015)</title><url>https://automatetheboringstuff.com/2e/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>froindt</author><text>I started reading this book this week in an effort to open up my job prospects down the line. I&amp;#x27;m a &amp;quot;technical&amp;quot; Industrial Engineer often serving as a liason between IT and the business. I can program in VBA and do anything you can name in Excel, but I want to move to a more programming oriented role down the line.&lt;p&gt;I want to be able to do statistical analysis, queries, and just &amp;quot;be better&amp;quot; at breaking down a problem into easily solvable steps.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m using this book as a &amp;quot;learn the basics&amp;quot; stepping stone, and Project Euler as a list of solvable problems which will let me practice solving problems. After that I&amp;#x27;ll move into some personal projects I have in mind.&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have additional book or resource recommendations beyond that? I know packages like NumPy and&amp;#x2F;or SciPy will be useful down the line.&lt;p&gt;* Codecademy feels overpriced at $40&amp;#x2F;month or $250&amp;#x2F;year (no refunds for using a partial year).&lt;p&gt;* Google Python class was free but about 10 years old. With the Python 2-&amp;gt;3 debacle, I was unsure if fundamentals had changed and hesitant to sink my time into it.&lt;p&gt;* Lynda runs $25 or $40&amp;#x2F;month but would offer python as well as many other resources.&lt;p&gt;* Udemy - has a number of courses including one by Al, the author of this book. Looked like it&amp;#x27;d be a good value, but I&amp;#x27;m not sure how much more value the videos add than the book.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rainbowzootsuit</author><text>You might check with your public library. Ours offers free access to Lynda.com from your home by  redirecting through the public library&amp;#x27;s websitt.</text></comment>