While waiting for my viva I want to beef up my hard skills to land a dream job in London. I was talking with a friend that leads a team in a related friend and he suggested I should learn python. I would like to become competent in a few weeks. I took a few courses in visual basics in high school and a bit of C++ in college but those were years ago. I found this video on YouTube: I'm about an hour in and I'm pretty happy with it. I programmed a basic calculator, again. I remember doing this in VB with a GUI and C++. What are some good sources for learning Python? Udemy, youtube, workbooks? I was reading the comments to this video and some people were crapping on the Udemy courses but they could just be kissing ass. Should I be looking at any other programming language? I will have a PhD in Politics and InternationRelationsons soon and I'm looking for work as a Geopolitical analyst.
Related - Free intro course on TensorFlow - https://eu.udacity.com/course/intro-to-tensorflow-for-deep-learning--ud187 Keep an eye on Packt's free book of the day, python stuff often pops up there too.
I'm working through a udemy course (not python) and its very high quality. While others have been mediocre and some have been pretty poor. There's no real quality control on udemy. Having said that, if a course has sold a lot and it's highly rated, it's probably fine. With python, I would look to take any introductory course (the video above should be ok) and then transfer over to something like "learn data science using python". Which at a glance there is something like that on Udemy. If you've only a few weeks, then I would do the above and go to sites like hacker rank to practice general programming problems.
Has Visual Basics changed much in the last 10 years? I took a few visual basics courses in 2006. It seems that VB and VBA are still relevant.
I originally learned Python through: https://learnpythonthehardway.org/ Despite the name, there's nothing hard about the course. They mainly advocate typing all code into the IDE/editor (instead of copying and pasting) and not using a debugger (at least in the initial phase of learning), hence the "hard" name - but I think both these things are quite important when learning a new language. Python is a great starting point, especially if you want to go down the data analysis route. There's naturally a tonne of other languages and technologies you could learn, but start with Python and see if you need to learn anything later on (depending on the job market).
Learn python the hard way is a great resource. We use it here at bit a ton and I just learnt it by picking a project and learning as I went along. Same as any other language. This is also a great book for learning and goes over projects that are practical and could come up while working .https://automatetheboringstuff.com/
I think you should mainly start with watching the Holy Grail, followed by the Life of Brian. It is also important that you start formulating your own silly walk... ... I just had to, sorry!
I don't see anyone using vb anymore. Like anywhere. Its pretty much dead at this stage. Only super legacy stuff requires it. For data analytics you might look at R as well.
Python is a relatively easy language to get going with due to its readability, and I would think following through guides on youtube would get you going, try thinking of applications you'd like to be able to create and you can start trying to think how some of the features within them might be done in python, and naturally expand your knowledge and understanding of it as you build it up. I'm far from any kind of python expert but whenever I've had to use it, for either personal or work related reasons I've got by through online guides etc, rather than any kind of formal training/courses.
I doubt VBA is used beyond some simple office work in any field(or at least I hope so). I think the phrase "If all you have is a hammer then everything starts to look like a nail" was coined just to describe excel. I would argue if anyone has got to the stage where they are using VBA it's probably time to put down excel and learn python anyway. If geopolitical analysis is dealing with data on a global scale then you would not be going near excel. It would be SQL databases, NoSql like mongoDB, data warehouses, business information tools and all of that fun stuff.
There were rumours of Microsoft adding support for python in Excel but I've got no idea what happened top that.
There's already third party support. Haven't used it myself, tho', 'cos there's no Excel for Linux (yet).
I thought the same until i was talking to my sister who said they use VB a lot at the investment bank she works at, Python too. When i asked why, she said it does what they need and nearly everyone has used it.
VBA is used here and there, usually when it's legacy stuff that there isn't the time, resources, or appetite to update. VBA can be very useful if you spend a lot of time in Excel; there are better tools out there, but some companies don't always have those resources for whatever reason. Either way, don't count on making a career out of VBA. VB - not VBA - can still be used with .NET classic and .NET core, but honestly... why would you want to? If you're using .NET then you'll be using the same framework and the same core classes in either language; you really would benefit so much more by switching to a language that people actually use to get Real Work (TM) done with.
100%. The important thing is to not get stuck in the tutorial cycle. Once you've done a couple go out and build something. Whenever you get stuck, read the documentation on it.
I just helped one of the interns do this, in a few weeks she's now quite good at Python. Udemy is the way to go, as employers respect it as actual training. I'd avoid doing any other tutorials, as you'll get stuck in the 'know a bit' cycle, you know some so you get bored and can't focus to learn it all fully. Its probably worth doing some courses on flowcharts and program planning too, as thats what the difference between hobbist and professional is!
