🔒 How to study/study strategy?

[versed cobalt]

Hello.
So a bit background, im electrical engineer who been doing data analytics lately, as i go deeper the more i see that i need python skills. I was able to land a job as junior developer, the workplace knows i have very minimal experience with programming so no pressure from there but i feel like i need to get better. Also im enrolled in data sciences masters program so even there i need python.
So we establised i need python. About the workflow i have been doing right now.
Basicly i put my task in the chatGPT or claude and ask it to generate code. Copy paste the code and run it. Doesnt work? paste error code into gpt and copy paste again until it works. Well it may be ok strategy for personal projects but i have been debugging 3 days for a code to parse xml file!
Same for school projects.

Well why i dont write it myself? Im lacking skill in knowing WHAT to code or write, i dont know how to tackle it via programming.
Let's say task is to do electrical consumption analysis.
I know that i have to:

1. Import or get the data from somewhere (program, website etc)
2. data cleaning, make it readable
3. Analyse the data, calculate some mean values etc
4. Plot the results and make conclusions
   But i dont have any idea how to import data from program for example, so i just ask gpt to generate me code for it. I know i can plot it via matplotlib and i need time on x axis and i plot it as sin graph but i dont know how to write it in python.

So how do i study with having some prior knowledge? ideally it would be cool if it would be relatable to the topics i need so i can right away practice those at work.

[icy oak]

@versed cobalt

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[manic aspen]

basically you want a crash course on pandas

all the stuff mentioned here relate well with pandas

just watch tutorials on pandas and people applying it to analyse sample datasets

Data science is huge, and you gotta start somewhere

pandas is your first bet

@versed cobalt

!pip pandas

[icy oak]

pandas v2.2.3

Powerful data structures for data analysis, time series, and statistics

Released on <t:1726837804:D>.

[north crag]

All that being said, there's no shortcuts and everyone needs to learn the basics, no matter the discipline

it doesn't matter if you're doing data science, web dev, ML, game dev, etc

If you try and jump ahead and just focus on your specific discipline, you're going to miss a lot

[manic aspen]

actually, I always try to jump ahead and come back
new way to grasp stuff you know

[north crag]

I don't see how that's advantageous

if you struggle with for loops and functions, then jumping into data science won't help

[manic aspen]

no no not from the basics

[north crag]

that's what I'm talking about

[manic aspen]

just jump ahead into pandas (after basics obv.) poke around etc.

[north crag]

yes, I'm saying learn the basics before you jump into data science

[manic aspen]

OP had a lot of text in the description so I assumed they knew python

[north crag]

"after basics obviously" isn't so obvious to everyone

[manic aspen]

yea maybe

[north crag]

they seem to already be experienced with data science but they need to still learn basic python if they want to learn how to do data science with python

[manic aspen]

I don't think they are here

but mind just throwing a good pandas tutorial

this is for python tutorial: https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/index.html

pandas tutorial: https://www.kaggle.com/learn/pandas (hands-on)

pandas exerciese; https://github.com/guipsamora/pandas_exercises

[north crag]

let's wait for their response before overwhelming them 🙂

@versed cobalt still here?

[manic aspen]

https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/getting_started/tutorials.html

it's only a couple of links

they can come back later and visit them even if this gets archived

@versed cobalt cheers!

[versed cobalt]

Sry, yes im here

Well i have basics of python down but my problem is more about not knowing where/when to use them

[manic aspen]

it sounds more like "I know python, but I don't know what it does (or) what I can do with it"

[versed cobalt]

Like i know syntax but i dont know where and how to use syntax to write code

[manic aspen]

ok basics are not down

[versed cobalt]

Ye, this

[manic aspen]

So how do you claim that your python basics are down

@versed cobalt

[versed cobalt]

That depends on basics definition lol. i can read code and understand the syntax

[manic aspen]

alright

start with a library

as a library is mostly how you would use python for a meaningful task

as you mentioned you need some data science

start with pandas

this would be the roadmap (from my side):

1. Finish this off: https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/index.html (even if you think your basics are done)
2. pick a tutorial from https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/getting_started/tutorials.html or watch a youtube video
   2.1 https://www.kaggle.com/learn/pandas - stripped down exercises on pandas

2.2 Finish all the exercises here - https://github.com/guipsamora/pandas_exercises

[versed cobalt]

Thank you! Thats what i was looking for, some step by step progression

[manic aspen]

hehe

[icy oak]

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