Reuven Lerner: Want to spend more time coding Python, and less time on Stack Overflow?

How many times a day do you visit Stack Overflow?  (If you’re like most programmers, the answer is “many.”)  Wouldn’t it be nice to just be able to write Python code, without interrupting your work every few hours to check (or double-check) something?

After all, whether you’re a data scientist, app developer, or just a hobbyist, your goal isn’t to search for answers to your problems. Your goal is to actually solve those problems.

Consider what would happen if you were able to use all of that search-for-answers time on actually solving problems:

• You wouldn’t have to read bad and semi-bad answers before (finally) finding the right solution.
• You wouldn’t have to mess with the answer you found, to make it appropriate for your situation.
• You could take on bigger and more complex projects, because you’d be able to concentrate on the higher-level ideas and problems, doing the simpler stuff easily and quickly.
• You would write shorter and more expressive code, impressing others and making future maintenance easier.
• You would be able to delight your clients with faster turnaround time and more sophisticated solutions.

People are using Python for all sorts of amazing things nowadays. But you’re only able to do those amazing things when you’re solving problems, not when you’re dealing with the nuts and bolts, or searching for answers online:

• Become a data scientist, contributing to everything from drug discovery to financial models to self-driving cars. (As you might know, Python is the leading language in data science and machine learning — so knowing it is the key to getting a job in this hot industry.)
• Create Web applications, using Python-based frameworks such as Django and Flask, to create sites like Instagram, Pinterest, and Dropbox.
• Automate your home or office on a Raspberry Pi, integrating systems such as temperature sensors to microcontrollers in a single program.
• Use a single language to automate everything on your computer, instead of using such domain-specific languages as VBA and bash.

On March 10th, I’m starting a cohort of Weekly Python Exercise, my 15-week course specifically designed to improve your Python fluency.   (This is cohort B1, one of three advanced cohorts I offer each year.)

This cohort is aimed at anyone with at least 6-8 months of Python under their belt, who wants to go beyond basic data structures, function definitions, and objects — learning about and getting better at such topics as:

• iterators
• generators
• decorators
• advanced object-oriented techniques
• threads and processes

Learn more, get a WPE trial, and sign up for Weekly Python Exercise B1

Questions or comments? Just contact me via e-mail (reuven@lerner.co.il) or on Twitter (@reuvenmlerner)

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