Back

@weirdjokes And here was I thinking that I wanted to learn #Python just for fun (not because of work-related stuff). For example, I have over 300 books and I wanted to learn a programming language just to practise and reviving my programming skills. I could create a management system.

In my teenage years, I studied in a technical school and learnt a bit of programming in some of the course modules: #Basic, #Pascal and #COBOL.

Is that the won't language to learn?

@WittyDragon @weirdjokes vibe coding seems to designate the practice of blindly trusting the AI to write the code for you, without learning the skills to understand and fix it if necessary.

ai is good-ish at python because it's a very popular language, but not that good that you can let it build your project without competent supervision.

@tshirtman @weirdjokes I don't want AI to build it for me, I want to learn the skills and be proud of myself with what I achieve.

I have already seen how bad AI is, the quality of text it generates etc.

AI usage for me is exclusively related to creating surreal images etc and even at that AI doesn't really create exactly what I want. It's all a hype.

@WittyDragon @weirdjokes but nothing wrong with learning python imho, i've been at it for 20 years and made a career out of it, always more to learn, and it's very useful to know.

i use ai a bit for coding still, if you can supervise it, it can save time, but yeah, on its own it's knows the language well, but not much about using it correctly in a non trivial project.

@tshirtman @weirdjokes That's why I thought about Python as it's very useful to know. I already have a few ideas for other little projects that will help me.
Based on your vast experience, please could you recommend a good place to learn (book or online) that is free (not the book ) I can learn at my own pace. I don't have a lot of free time but want to use some of it to learn. I don't really want to pay for a subscription if I may not use their services constantly and then it's not worth it.

@WittyDragon @weirdjokes the downside is that i started learning long ago, so not sure what’s the current best way to learn the basics . There are tons of free resources though.
I do advise checking the official python docs for any specific question about a module/class/method first, it’s really good and always the most up to date.

https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/index.html

For important concepts, ned batchler’s website is really good for example https://nedbatchelder.com/text/names.html is good to get out of the way early.

@tshirtman @weirdjokes Perfect, thanks

@WittyDragon @tshirtman @weirdjokes come make some drawings with us! https://py5coding.org :)

Also check out https://github.com/jakevdp/WhirlwindTourOfPython

@villares @tshirtman @weirdjokes
At least these drawings will be good.

When I was a child and had art lessons, I was so proud to present the teacher with my wonderful drawing of a house and she thought it was a box.

She didn't know that many years later I might live in a shoe box - the joke is on her.

@tshirtman @weirdjokes Thanks, videos are always very helpful - they always come with some nuggets that the speaker remembers (or answers a question) and one might not find these on books.