Google for Developers
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2011–2018
51:37 · 3.7M views · Mar 1, 2010
The first part of Google's Python Class, taught by Nick Parlante, introducing the language and its strings. It is aimed at people with some programming familiarity and comes with exercises.
HN recommends it as a fast, accessible way to start learning Python.
5 comments from Hacker News
I watched the original Nick Parlante videos that this material is based off 7 years ago, and recommend it to anybody that thinks they need to learn programming. First Lecture. this video I took a couple C classes in college that were geared for people who already knew how to program and hated it. Never wanted to think about it again. Those videos helped abstract a lot of the low level muck away and build real stuff. Once I was able to understand some of these concepts and why you would actually use them I could go back and learn all the things that were too deep in the weeds to understand. Its a bit dated now but still some of the best training videos I've seen.
I found the post worthwhile and I do not doubt its veracity whatsoever. I think you attack the author unfairly. I clicked to read because I followed a similar path to the author, except I never attended any kind of bootcamps. I started writing my first django app and one month later I had my first coding job. It was difficult at first, I was often baffled by the intentions of the codes author who I took over for, but I made the product work and it changed my life forever. I just started coding professionally January 15th of this year and already I've fixed and enhanced two large complicated projects and built two of my own. So anyone saying this isn't possible is absolutely wrong. I recommend watching Google's Python Class [1] for anyone getting started with Python that has a familiarity with basic programming concepts. [1] : this video
The best tool for the job is the tool that lets you finish and ship a product. Try Python ( [LINK] ). It's free, easy to learn, uses the latest in methodologies, has massive community support, and you can have an app up in 10 minutes. You can also add django if you want a very well thought out framework with scaffolding, enhanced models, etc. Check it out on YouTube: this video
The article is very short. It just tells you that Google's Python intros are awesome, then gives you the links below: Lessons: [LINK] YouTube videos: this video Downloadable puzzles: [LINK] You won't miss much if you skip the article entirely. That said, the material it links to seems pretty good. I've been trying to learn Python lately and working through the interpreter at first seems to be a good way to get a sense of how Python does things. And there are some neat libraries out there. For example, you're not much more than a "from pygr import worldbase" away from wandering through the human (or mouse, or yeast...) genome if you want to. That said, I still need to set up a proper vim config for Python.
Readability PDF: [LINK] Site seems to be down (PDF posted above) but the link to the lessons is a good link to keep handy. Link to class: [LINK] Link to video 1: this video