Learned Python Basics, what now?

[muzikman]

There is likely a big difference between what you want to do and what there is demand for. Which one do you really want to ask about?

Web scraping is only necessary when the owners of the data do not want the data to be shared easily. If they want to make it easily shared then they would provide a web service or API, whatever you want to call it. You should learn how to use web services and how to create them.

I am not sure what the market is like now but I assume that beginners still are much more likely to be hired for maintenance than new development. Employers want programmers that can fix and modify systems developed by others; sometimes the software has already been modified by many others. They often want someone that can clean up and/or fix messes. If you want a job then you need to be realistic.

Databases are sure important. Also for a job you need to be able to do systems the way that most developers do, not the way you want to. So learning something like Django would be important.

As I mentioned, I started doing web development in 1998. I started with Cold Fusion and MS Access. Then, I evolved into classis ASP and SQL server. Then, MySQL, Postgress. My strengths are database design, SQL and I did a lot of .NET. Then I played around with PHP MVC frameworks such as Laravel. I had to take 10 years off from everything and stopped working as I came down with an illness that needs to be managed and I have restrictions. The last real job I had was a hybrid. .NET, SQL server and SEO. I am familiar with OOP, just not with Python.

The thing that confuses me the most are the many packages out there for Python and paths. I am pretty good and REST API consumption. I built a web site 8 years ago that was basically like a copy of IMDB. I consumed two APIs to retrieve the related data as PHP objects. If you're interested in seeing what it was like, go to the Wayback Machine.

I worked for a company called FirstPlace Software around 2004. They made a product called Web Position Gold. I'm not sure if any of you remember it. Those of you that are old enough might. It helped you check your rankings based on keywords in the major search engines at the time. I worked on the requests and responses to emulate a browser so the user wouldn't get blocked. Back then, we did it fine. It's more difficult now.

Anyway, I am 54 years old with MS. I am on disability here in the US and it pays next to nothing. I could get back into SEO but I really do not want to do that. I was also an affiliate marketer and made high six figures back in the day. Development was just a tool I needed. Then I got sick.



As for web, I really like the MVC pattern. I noticed that Django and Flash are somewhat similar. However, I am not sure if they have controllers. I will have to research it. Like a User controller that has methods for all user based actions. I looked into Flask and it seems as though, they don't have individual files for Users and such. I know they have a template system and routing but I don't know what they use for views. Can you create individual controllers (or what they would call it in Flask) for Users, Admins, etc? I looked at the file Structure of Flask and I really didn't get it. It seems that every path and function lives in app.py

What would you all say, which Python directions are in demand, in order of most to least? This is what is driving me crazy.


Maybe I will bush up on my HTML, SQL, CSS and try out Flask. With all of the CMS platforms out there, are building custom web sites still in demand?