Learning Python

[Johnygo]

I have a general question about learning Python. I am learning Python by myself using a book and doing the practice tests in the book which are every 5-10 page. The book is 530 page and I got to the page 230. What I am doing is that when I read 50 pages, I go back and do all the practice tests from beginning to review and learn better but I recognized that I keep forgetting how to do the practice tests and as soon as I take a look at the saved code that I did it before, it all come back. So I finished a set of practices at noon but about 4PM I can't remember at all how to do it. Anybody has the same problem? This is so frustrating for me because I study at least 6 hours a day but... I started to learn python just to use in networking and now I like it more than networking but sometimes I think this is not for me. Anyone any idea?

[metulburr]

It takes time to learn a programming language. I still reference my fundamentals book after 8 years of python...in which i have read hundreds of times before.

[perfringo]

I experienced the same pain at the beginning. To overcome it I used sort of “personal wiki” kept in form of Jupiter notebook(s).

Every test/assignment I tried to generalise - take away mumbo-jumbo what they are putting into the text and see “forest behind the trees”. So tasks became: how to iterate sequence —> and find second largest element etc. At the beginning I structured wiki around datatypes (sequences, strings, lists..., mappings etc). With Jupyter one can mix text and code, have table of content for structure and lookup etc. When I faced problem, I tried to generalize and find solution from SO or books. I added links to my wiki and of course code which I choose as most preferred for this type of tasks (and revisited/rewrote it when my knowledge of language grew or stumbled upon better solution).

This served me well for following reasons: abstraction is very important in programming (faster you learn it the better, your search results in SO will be much relevant if you are able define problem :-)); defining problem and looking for “best” solution enforced to work through a lot of materials and taught me read other people’s code; I had feeling that I built up the knowledge (confidence that I headed in right direction)

At the beginning I recognized that I have encountered this type of problem before and that I have solution (but didn’t remember code) and looked it up in “wiki”. After some time I recognized the problem and remembered code as well.

Your mileage may vary and reality is more complex but defining and working through the problems and writing solutions in systematic way for easy lookup helped me personally a great deal.

[Johnygo]

Thank you Perfringo and metulburr for responses. Perfringo: I am kind of doing the same thing but I save all the codes with the page as the name in Geany so every time I have to check something I know where to look for and I try to change the codes and make them a little better because I have learned more. The reason I started this post is that I thought maybe something is wrong with me and I wanted to know if anybody had the same experience or it's just me. I started less than a month ago and with your reply now I will try more to learn faster.
Thank you again for your response.

[metulburr]

A month is not long in terms of learning anything. It is normal for how little time you have under your belt. As you progress, it will get easier.

[sudheerm]

Even i am also facing same problem still. Some time while learning books are better and in-person explanation is very easy to learn for us, we can also remember by doing practicing. In some cases video tutorials will give good practice. Finally as a human some time we feel hard some time we feel easy so, we should have clarity what we are doing with proper planning then we should implement with interest. In such way we will remember and will not feel had also. That is what i felt my self and the same expressing with you guys.

[Johnygo]

Thank you Sudheerm for sharing your experience with me.

[Nitram]

Useful advice, I am in the same position as the OP