The Python Bible

Throughout my career I’ve done work at all levels of the “Stack.” The distinction between a “Front-End Developer” and a “Full-Stack Developer” currently seems to very heavily favor the later, although some (if not many) “Full-Stack” people I talk to have a very limited understanding of some of the most essential Front-End areas of focus, like CSS and Accessibility.

In an effort for me to broaden the scope of work that I qualify for, I’ve been taking classes in AI technologies, and a lot of them require a foundational knowledge of Python in order to prepare and manipulate data. The first course I took in Python is “The Python Bible” from Udemy.

It’s quite good! The instructor is cheerful and encouraging. Someone with very little programming experience could pass this pretty well. Someone like myself who already has experience in various other programming languages could probably have replaced about 75% of this with a cheat-sheet showing the structural conventions used in Python and how they compare to other languages (e.g. a Python List is similar to a JavaScript Array)

I joke that I can now call myself a “Full-Stack Developer” again. The truth is, I’ve been a Full-Stack Developer for 30 years, they just keep changing what the “Stack” is and sometimes I skip a backend technology here or there so I can focus on Front-End and User Experience.