As with learning anything, practice is the key and with Python that means typing code into the CLI – you will not make much progress just reading blogs or watching tutorials. In an effort to learn quickly it can sometimes be tempting to think, “I will watch the next video, then I will try a practical exercise”. It’s not until you try and code something that you realize you have not taken it in as well as you thought.
Completing all the practical exercises in whatever program you are following is great but you can only get so far with exercises built around cars or animals. To take your learning to the next level try to come up with a project of your own. Suddenly you will be forced to think outside the box instead of following along “parrot fashion”. Try to think of a simple task that you do every day at work or at home and write some code for it. Keep the scope small with a clear beginning and target result. This approach will not only help you with taking the theoretical to the practical, it will make the whole experience real and the benefits tangible.
It was not until I challenged myself with a few such projects that I really felt I had learned something and was making real progress.