Days 1-3: Python
Start and progress through the official Python documentation website, which guides you to the following resources:
- 5%: Beginner's Guide to Python
- 95%: The Python Tutorial (really dense, take your time)
Why this, first off?
Everyone is trying to sell you something.
In contrast, the official Python documentation is authored by a team of volunteers who are trying to make it easy for you to use Python.
While they are trying to sell you Python, it’s free and the only way you can “buy” Python is if they make it easy for you to use it.
The other reason to start here is that you will come back to the official documentation for Python many times in your career.
You may be surprised to learn: software engineering is ~30% reading. I don’t have a citation for that, but that’s been my personal experience over 10 years of software engineering and I have no expectation of that changing.
These official documents are an amazing, free resource for learning about how to use Python to build software.
The writing is not perfect or friendly to beginners, but if you take the career plunge into software engineering you will come back to this document for years to come.
Outcomes of this studying
You should:
- be able to run Python in your terminal12
- be able to explain what a “variable” and a “function” is
- how to define a variable or function in Python
- be able to explain what is a Python “list”
- be able to explain what is a Python “dictionary”
- be able to explain what “looping” means, why you would want to do it, and give examples of software that loops (e.g. where might looping occur in specific types of software? Google? Facebook? Snapchat?)