Three years ago I tried learning Python from a textbook and gave up after 2 weeks

I picked up this big yellow Python book back in 2021 and thought I could just read through it like a novel. By day 4 I was totally lost on loops and conditional statements because there were no examples that matched anything I cared about. Last week I finally tried again but this time I used a free online course that made me build a little guessing game on day one. I actually finished the whole course in about a month and now I'm working on a small script to organize my music files. The difference was having to type code and see it run instead of just reading about concepts. Has anyone else found that project based learning clicked way better than reading from a book?

2 comments

2 Comments

robin_foster11mo ago

My copy of that big yellow Python book is literally collecting dust on my shelf right now, I swear it's been three years and I've never made it past chapter 5. I tried reading about functions and my brain just glazed over like I was back in high school biology class. Then I stumbled onto a YouTube series where the guy built a text-based adventure game and I actually followed along and finished it in two days. The whole "learning by doing" thing is so obvious now it makes me mad I didn't try it sooner. I guess I just needed to see my dumb little code actually print something on screen before my brain would cooperate.

wesley_grant331mo ago

Bro you got that serious about a $30 book?