Ask HN: Courses to teach an experienced JavaScript dev Python

3 points by makingstuffs ↗ HN
Hey all! I am an experienced JS dev and want to delve into the realms of Pyhton to expand my toolset.

I've found a load of courses online to teach people Python or JS but am struggling to find something which essentially teaches Python in the context of being a dev who already knows JS/TS.

I have found a couple articles which go through some of the differences but I figured there must be a course of some kind which is aimed at teaching to build out projects in Python by the way of giving the user a JS project and asking them to remake it.

Does anyone have anything reputable which they can recommend?

TIA!

7 comments

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What's your goal in learning Python?

ML? Backend web dev? Leetcode?

Hard to recommend a course without more detail.

Mostly ML, Data manipulation and Backend web dev. I've accepted a role in my company's tech solutions department and we do a lot for the data teams there as well as a lot with LLMs so I wanted to get a bit more proficient in Python as that seems to be the go to for a lot of this.
> ML

ML is obviously a huge topic. So are you mainly talking about deep learning related stuff?

If that's the case, I'd recommend fast.ai.

For Data Analysis related stuff, just find any O'Reilly book on Pandas.

For Backend Web Dev, look for a book on Flask. It should be very easy to pick up if you've done backend stuff with JS.

In terms of learning Python "syntax", it's honestly really simple. I'd just get a Chat GPT-4 membership and then just copy and paste any syntax you don't understand and ask it to explain it to you.

Thanks for this mate I really appreciate it!

> If that's the case, I'd recommend fast.ai.

This is pretty much what I am looking for in that regard so thanks

> For Data Analysis related stuff, just find any O'Reilly book on Pandas.

> For Backend Web Dev, look for a book on Flask. It should be very easy to pick up if you've done backend stuff with JS.

Thanks again, I think I struggle with learning coding from books personally and am definitely more of a learn by breaking kinda person but I will keep this in mind if I get stuck :)

> In terms of learning Python "syntax", it's honestly really simple. I'd just get a Chat GPT-4 membership and then just copy and paste any syntax you don't understand and ask it to explain it to you.

It's funny you say that, this has been my approach so far but with Bard. We do have a GPT subscription at work so I may give that a go too as i have found instances where Bard is obviously wrong even though I do not know the language

Yeah Bard is terrible. Get a subscription to cursor.ai and use gpt-4.

It's a bit pricey at $20 a month but totally worth it.

https://training.talkpython.fm/courses/all

From the same guy — Michael Kennedy of TalkPythonToMe podcast fame (though I think the courses came first). I’ve found his courses to be no-nonsense and good. The pacing and the teaching style aligns with how I learn.

There’s no subscription. Just buy a course and it’s yours. There are free ones too so you can check some Out.

Thanks a lot mate I will have a look and see if anything clicks!