good website for Python newbie to learn, ask questions, etc?

x509 said:

I'm now learning Python using the Microsoft online courses, and I've identified any number of other websites with tutorials. I mostly understand the tutorials, but I'm a bit fuzzy on the classes and objects stuff, so I need a website where I can search the forums and ask questions, etc.

Any recommendations?

First I tried to learn C++ using tutorials from cplusplus.com, but that language seems a bit convoluted, so I followed the recommendations on many websites and switched to learning Python.

I already know procedural programming very well from my long-distant university days, but one of the languages I knew then doesn't even have a Win 10 compiler and the other language was good only for scientific and engineering problems.

For learning these sorts of things at home -- maybe I'm old fashioned but I find You Tube courses only of value AFTER I've got over the initial part of the subject --i.e I don't use them for learning from scratch.

I'd recommend those excellent yellow covered " For Dummies" books -- "Python for Dummies" is excellent.



Beginning a subject one often needs to continually go backwards to previous stuff or make notes, This is not really "Do-able" with a lot of online courses. Online works fine when its showing me how to get the back off an awkward laptop or things like that or even learning spoken languages - but python is really good for things like AI, robotics, Data metrics etc and really needs quite a lot of "initial Brain power" to get started.


I'd recommend also installing a Linux live distro (as a VM if you are on a Windows system) and use python on that -- as if (and you will for sure !!) - hose things up you can just wipe the machine and start again without messing up your running system. If you want to get proficient in python you'll have to get used to using batch scripts and the command line - and any linux distro is OK for this.

I haven't tried python on Windows WSL yet but that also could be some alternative too.

Cheers
jimbo