Hitchhiker’s guide to learning python

This blog post will be a guide to python resource, right from where you can start learning this amazing  language to finding resources to c solve complex problems in the field of computer vision, big data , Natural Language processing, etc.

My aim is to refine these post to  make it better each week, add more resources, add more information and eventually create a path for people to choose from. But, its gonna take time to reach there. Till then , I hope this continues to help you.

Please feel free to add your suggestions in the comments.

This post will be forever growing, so come back each week, to find more resources :

1) Where to begin learning Python ?

There are tons of resources out there but very few that teach you to use this language in the right way while showing you the power it has. Here is a list that has resonated well with me:

• Head First Python  :  For absolute beginners who want to have a taste of all the things python can do , this is the right book . The advantages of learning from this book are:
  • It uses a project based approach, so you can see your progress visually with what you’ve achieved so far.
  • It dives straight to programming from the first chapter and has exercises in between chapters to help you make sure you understand concepts.
  • It covers various fields like standalone applications, web applications, mobile applications. So , you know the capability  of python and where it can be used.
  • By the end of this book, you will be able to build applications on our own with very little help

The disadvantage of this is that, it’s not for people who prefer in-depth    and in-
detail explanation of each concept.

If this is the right book for you, you can purchase it here :

• Think Python :  ( How to think like a computer scientist ) : This is a free e-book designed for those people who like to master the core-concepts, the syntax and features available in python.   This focuses on introducing you to different programming concepts and how they can be effectively implemented.  This book gets into each aspect of programming be it recursion or inheritance, etc in much detail than the “Head first Python ” book.

There is a hard cover book(link below) , the latest edition has more in depth
explanation, resources and updated with many more examples and real use case
scenarios.

  Advantages : 

1. Teaches in depth, the concepts and efficient programming paradigms
2. Uses a scientific approach by providing resources to algorithms and efficient data structures implementations
3. Provides a guide to tools and libraries for  mathematical computations, and also insights to data-analysis

You can buy the paperback  from here :

2) Online Courses

Free Online Courses (  MOOCs)  : These sections contain a few links to online courses for learning python. These courses are conducted by top universities from across the globe. These are structured to make sure that you get the best of resources available to develop your next big application.  People who do not like to read books much can take this approach.

• Udacity –  Intro To python Programming 
• Coursera – Python Programming Part 1   , Python Programming Part 2 
• Edx – Learn Programming with Python
• Edx – intro to computer science and programming with python

These courses offer extremely structured content aimed for the learner to go from beginner to advanced please go though the course content and pick one.