My top 5 python programming course recommendations

Key Takeaways

I have written over 1 million lines of Python code. I've been writing in the language for well over 10 years now. And I have over 1,000 Python tutorial videos and detailed courses. If you watch this channel, you know that I'm kind of the Python guy. It's what I love and it's what I write code in pretty much every single day. So, in this video, I'm going to share with you my top five recommendations for Python courses. Some of them are free, some of them are paid. All of these are resources that I've either made, contributed to, or used to learn in the past and that I think you can get value from. I've tried to pick a bit of diversity so that they're not all the exact same thing. Some are really good for web development. Some are better for data science. Some are free, right? And they're easier. They're better for people who like reading as opposed to, you know, doing practical projects. You get the idea. Let's get into it and let me share with you these five different courses. So, the first course on my list here is called Programming Expert. Now, this course was actually designed and developed by myself as well as the Algo Expert team, but I want to be very transparent. I get no money if you buy this course. The way that this worked is that I was paid a flat fee, a large sum of money to develop this course by Algo Expert, a company you may know. I then had a limited royalty, which went away after a few years. So, right now, if you buy this course, I don't make any money. So, that actually allows me to be very objective here. And while I'm sharing it with you, I will talk about kind of some of the flaws in the course, things that you may want to look out for, and who it's not the best for. Okay, so let's go through it here. This course is designed to be more of a general software engineering course. Again, it says programming expert, not Python expert. So, while Python is the main language that's taught inside of this course, it's not the core focus, and I don't focus on Python modules or frameworks or web development or things along those lines. So, while you do learn a lot about programming, you don't get all of this super Python specific knowledge which a lot of you may want. Now, that said, I think the course is really well put together. Obviously, I put it together. We had thousands of people buy it who were quite happy with it. And if we scroll through here, you can see an example of a sample lesson. We have a video. We can go in here. We can actually answer different questions. There's a mix of multiple choice questions as well as coding questions. There's assessments at the end of each section. So, if I go back here, you'll see there's an assessment. I can't do it because I'm just in the free mode right now. And then if you get to the bottom, there's a few projects that you can work on as well. The course also teaches Go, teaches software engineering tools, software design, you know, advanced programming principles. Overall, a really well-rounded course for programming in general, but not specifically Python. Again, Python is the main language, but that's not the reason why you would probably buy this course. It's more because it kind of generally sets you up to be a pretty good developer. Anyways, that's the first course. It is $99. Again, I don't get any money if you buy it, and I have no control over the pricing of this course. I no longer even can like really touch any of the stuff on the back end, but I do think it's worth checking out if you want this style of course. Now, the next course on my list is the Python programming fundamentals course, which comes from Data Camp. Now, full disclosure, Data Camp is a long-term partner of my channel. I've worked with them for many videos, but I personally know a lot of people that have gone through this course, and I've gone through it pretty in-depth myself, so I can confidently recommend it. Now, this course is much more Python ccentric compared to programming expert where everything you're learning is pure Python skills. So, rather than branching into Go or talking about software design or things along those lines, it's really just focused on getting you up to speed with Python as fast as possible. And it actually contains four courses inside of one. So you have introduction to Python uh for developers, intermediate Python for developers, Python toolkit, data types in Python, and it's very comprehensive in terms of teaching you all of the Pythonic features like, you know, list comprehensions, things along those lines. Now, the thing that I personally really like about this course is that it's focused on being interactive right from the beginning. So notice this is kind of what it looks like when you're inside of the course. You start by directly going inside of an in browser kind of code editor or IDE and you spend a lot more time coding than you do watching videos. Now, that's very important because it's one thing to watch information, but a ton of studies show that when you do that, you only retain about 20% of the information compared to if you have hands-on learning, you can retain upwards of 75 to 90% of the information, which is really what you're looking for. If I check out the course outline here, you can see all of the different content that's inside of here. And again, most of this is actually exercises, projects, and hands-on learning, which is the thing that I really do like about data camp. Anyways, that is the Python programming fundamentals course because I do work with data camp on a long-term basis. If you are interested in this course, you can get it for 25% off and I think on this list, it is the best beginnerfriendly course if you're just getting started. It is also the cheapest and most affordable one and really teaches you those specific Python skills. Okay. Now, the next course on my list is kind of the next step after you complete the uh Python programming fundamentals course if you do decide to go with data camp, and that's the associate Python developer course. Now, again, this is the fundamentals. This is really the basics teaching you all of the stuff for beginners. And this is where you level up and you learn more advanced Python features. So, if we look at this course here, we'll actually see some of the same courses we saw in the other one. And that's because those are prerequisites. So, intro to Python, intermediate Python, but then we get into some new ones like working with dates and times in Python. We have a project, right? Context managers, decorators, regular expressions, introduction to object-oriented programming, introduction to shell, where you're learning a lot more advanced features within the Python programming language that are specific to Python as a language. And if you watch any of the roadmap videos that I make on my channel where I discuss how to learn Python, how to do it most effectively, these are the topics I recommend that you get into in that intermediate and advanced stage. and they have them here in this course which believe it or not is actually rare. A lot of people when they make these courses they don't include a lot of these more advanced topics which are fundamental to really getting good at Python if you want to call yourself a Python developer. So again this has all of kind of the same features as the other course because it comes on the same platform data camp and I think you'll see on data camp that these are the most tailored specifically for those of you that really want to learn all of that Python content. Okay so with that in mind that is going to wrap up those two courses there. Now I want to go on to one of my favorite websites which is Real Python. Okay. Now this contains both paid and free courses. I'd say a majority of the content on this site is free and it's mostly written content. So there are a few videos on this site. Overall the videos are not as good as the writing, but the writing is very good. So if you're someone who prefers just reading, you like going through documentation, you like to read a book, for example, to learn how to code, this is definitely the site for you. And again, you can get a massive amount of content completely for free. So, Real Python has probably the most in-depth Python tutorials again in terms of the ridding content, not as many exercises or interactivity, but if I go here to Python basics, intro to Python, which is the track I typically recommend to people that like this style of learning, you'll see that there's 17 resources on this page. So, if I scroll through, you see setting up Python, code your first Python program, right? Strings and string methods, numbers and math, functions and loops. Let's just click into one of them here so you can get an idea. And you can see that it's all like really well formatted, well write, well-ridden story. You have a few videos. Again, the videos are not as good in my opinion as some of the other um courses out there, but there is just a significant amount of writing, which is what I like. Now, you'll see some of them are locked because again, there is some paid content on this site, but generally it has a lot of really high quality free content, and I don't want to play that video right now. Uh and then there are some assessments and other stuff like that. And also, if you want to learn really advanced Python concepts, they have some stuff here. here. So, for example, I go like, you know, threading or something, you'll see that like just something will pop up because there's always stuff popping up here. And we have, you know, threading, Python standard library, an intro to threading in Python, and they have just so many guides. Uh, the guy who wrote this, I've seen him on YouTube, and he has, I don't know, the the dedication to writing this stuff is insane. So, anyways, that is real Python. I would say that's probably the best free resource for really diving into Python. If you want to learn something really specific, I would look it up on this website first because overall, it's very high quality. again from the writing perspective, not really from all of the others, at least in my opinion. Now, the next course on my list comes from one of my favorite content creators, uh, and that is Programming with Mosh. You guys probably know him. He's been around longer than me, one of kind of the OGs in the space, and someone that I really looked up to actually when I was starting YouTube. Now, Mosh makes really high quality, high production courses. They are expensive. They're more on the premium side, but he spends a massive amount of time with the video editing. I know a little bit about his internal team and it's kind of incredible what he's actually able to create from like a production perspective which just to be honest completely rivals you know all the other courses on this list but mostly just from the video side of things. So for example, if we look at this course, the complete Python course from beginner to pro. You know, he's saying, okay, it's a course you'll actually finish. And if we scroll through here, you can see all the information about the course. And the one thing that I like about this course is that it dives deeper into some of those Python modules. So Flask, Django, Fast API. I think he has all of those in here at least. Well, he talks about APIs at least. I don't know the exact framework. And if we go through the content, you'll see that you actually get into some more Python packages, which is super useful if you're trying to kind of specialize and learn about web development, for example. Then he has a little bit about machine learning, and you kind of get a taste of these different areas, which can be helpful when you're trying to pick what you want to do after you learn the Python basics. Now, I will say that this course is a little bit lighter when it comes to the exercises and the hands-on learning. It really focuses, at least with Mosha's content in general, the visuals and the diagrams and the explanations, which I think is great, but it seems like you're only going to be building these three projects here. Full disclosure, I've not fully gone through this entire course. I do know a few people that have, and that's kind of my, you know, take away from it and what I've heard, but obviously do your own research and have a look at it. Generally speaking, I know that Mosha is a great guy. He puts a lot of time into his courses. And again, if you really like those in-depth animations and you want to learn a little bit about web development and machine learning and things along those lines, then this is probably a good course to check out. In terms of pricing, sorry, I know I keep scrolling all over the place here. Let's go to it down here. This is in Durhams. This is a little bit uh it's around 100 USD after this discount. I don't know if that discount is always applicable or it's just because I'm in UAE, but the base price here is about $135. So, it is the most expensive one that I have on this list. a lot of the other ones are a little bit cheaper, right? If you want to get in and again kind of learn the basics, more for beginners. So, with that said, that is going to wrap up this video. There are tons of great Python resources online and obviously I can't show all of them in this video. These are ones that I know people have gone through, that I've recommended myself, that I've looked through extensively or that I've even built, right? So, I feel comfortable recommending them. And I'm very confident that if you were to purchase any of these programs, you would be extremely satisfied. Again, there's some great free ones, there's some great paid ones on this list. And I think do your due diligence, do a little bit of research, see exactly what you want. If you really just are a beginner and you're looking to get into Python as fast as possible, my general recommendation is the data camp one. If you're more unsure and you want to do kind of general software engineering, I think Programming Expert is a great choice. If you're looking for more textbased content and you like to read more than the hands-on stuff, go with Real Python. And if you're looking for something that feels a little bit more premium, you're okay with the higher price tag, and you want those really in-depth animations and graphics, then I think programming with Mosh is going to be the best one for you there. But again, a little bit lighter on the exercises and the hands-on side of things. Anyways guys, that's going to wrap it up. Let me know which courses I missed in the comments down below, and I will see you in the next one. [Music]