Attempting to learn Python in under a week

Now before I go into detail about the steps I will take to learn and try to master python in under a week, I have prior programming knowledge and am very familiar with JavaScript, Ruby, and Java. While I may be able to learn python in a short amount of time it should not discourage you as this challenge will only better yourself at learn a new technology in a short period of time, something that is very common in the real world and a good skill to have. If python is the first language you will learn you could not have chosen a better language as it is beginner friendly and easy to understand when compared to other popular languages. Now let get back to the main topic of this post.

Motivation

For this week’s challenge to learn a new framework or language in under a week I will try to learn python in under a week. The reason why I chose to learn python is because while actively searching for a Junior Web Developer position I noticed a common trend that many openings preferred candidates who had prior experience with python or multiple entry level positions that require knowledge of python along with basic knowledge of JavaScript and Ruby. This encouraged me to attempt to learn python in under a week and increase my chance of getting a developer position.

Goal for the Week

Now that I have a motivation to learn python I have set a goal to achieve by the end of the week to have a fully functional application using python. The project does not have to be fully constructed with python, it can be a backend server or fully built with python as I will make the decision based on how fast I can learn python and the packages I can take advantage of.

Days 1–2

For the first two days of the week the is simple but will be the most challenging part of the week as I will use online resources such as tutorials, youtube videos, and the python documentation to learn the language. It may seem that spending two entire days on tutorials to be overkill to learn the basics but I believe that if you spend more time understanding the basics of any programming language the better and quicker you will pickup the language and be able to construct functional programs.

Tips

• While I stated that I will spend two days on studying using tutorials try not to only watch or each tutorials but actually try to write functions or mini projects where you can implement the lessons you watched to further reinforce your knowledge
• Try to use this studying technique when learning a new language for every hour you spend watching or reading a tutorial spend double that time in actually testing and writing your own code. This will make you think as a python developer and allow you to think as a programmer instead of copying and pasting code from a tutorial where you will most likely not retain as much information.

Days 3–4

For the next two days we will focus on understanding Object Oriented Programming in python and using packages, modules, and anaconda. The reason why we will learn these concepts is due to the popularity and functionality these concepts allow us to use python to its full potential.

This will provide us to test and find any package that we can use in our application and decide how to use python in our application.

Days 5–7

During the final days of this week long challenge we now have learned all the skills require to build a fully functional application using python. These final three days will be used to build out the application and have it usable by the end of day seven.

Conclusion

This will be the plan I will follow to learn python in a week and it can be used to learn any language as the process can be replicated for any language. Hope this motivates you to continue to expand you programming knowledge .