How I mastered Python in Lockdown without spending a penny

I always wanted to learn programming. Writing codes, making algorithms always excited me. Being a mechanical engineer, I was never taught these subjects in depth.

I tried various online courses but it became difficult for me to manage work and studies at the same time.

I even thought of quitting my job and take a break to learn things that will help me uplift my career.

Fortunately, I didn't have to do this. Thanks to lockdown, I got ample time to focus on my studies. I wanted to make a career in data science and machine learning so I choose python as my first programming language.

Also budget was a constraint.

After doing my research on free Python courses, I figured out two online courses from the reviews. One was Udacity and other was Codecademy.

My first preference was always Codecademy but learning Python 3 requires paid version there.

I wanted to taste python before I pay for any online course. So I went with Udacity's Python free course.

Since I was a beginner the course took me almost 2 months to complete.

I learned basic syntax within the first two weeks itself.

The course is structured properly for any beginner to understand all the fundamental concepts of python.

The instructor is also well knowledgeable and fluent in her communication.

After every chapter, I had to go through problems and quizzes which required the knowledge learned from the module.

Unfortunately, this free course does not come with advanced projects as I expected it to be but anyways It helped me a lot in clearing my basic concepts.

The next step was to jump onto projects. So I downloaded the free version of the book ' Automate the boring stuff with Python'.

I must say this book helped me a lot in understanding python.

This book is divided into two parts. The first part is dedicated to the theory and later to the projects.

The theory part revised all my concepts which I learned at Udacity.

Doing projects required to download the Python compiler.

I went with Pycharm (make sure to download the community version)

PyCharm is Pythons IDE (Integrated Development Environment)

It is famous for its simplicity.

Thanks to this book I worked on projects that involved web scraping and regular expression.

Now my next step is to learn Numpy, a data science tool. Also, I am planning to enroll in Udacity's Data Scientist Course, as I am already impressed with its reviews.

I cannot say that I have mastered Python with these resources, but now I am enough confidant to launch my career in the field of data science and machine learning.

Good Luck.