I was navigating the confines of Udemy when I came across a Python course that powerfully caught my curiosity: Automate the Boring Stuff with Python Programming. It lasts about nine and a half hours, it's somewhat old, but it captivated me from the first minute.
Above, you can see my certificate, freshly minted and ready to show off on my LinkedIn profile. Many people with too much free time might object with something like, "but the course lasts less than 40 hours, it must be very bad or incomplete." To these types of individuals, I would say that a course is not worth more or less based on the amount of time it takes.
Sometimes there are 4-hour courses that explain everything in a concise and specific manner, and then there are those famous 60-hour courses where 10 are theory and 50 are excruciating practice. Halfway through the course, you realize that you're repeating most of the concepts. It's like those cartridges with 999 games, where 800 were the same but changed Mario's outfit color (yes, I also went through that golden era).
The course is basically a video and practice translation of the book of the same name. Although it is several years old (it uses a version of Python from 2015), it remains a gem to admire and is also great for taking the first steps in Python.
The content
It should be noted that the entire course is in English, but even if you don't have a strong command of the language, you can understand everything that is happening because Al Sweigart (the course creator) constantly executes commands in the console, demonstrating their results.
As for the course content itself, we have different sections covering all the fundamentals of Python:
- Control structures
- Conditional structures
- Functions
- Loops
- Lists and Dictionaries
- String Handling
- File Handling
- Debugging (it hurts a bit because he does it with the Python Shell)
After explaining the basics, the fun begins: Automation.
- Web Scraping
- Reading and writing Excel, Word, and PDF files
- Sending and reading emails
- Automating GUI
It is worth noting that at the end of the GUI chapter, he shows a script that plays a sushi preparation video game by itself.
Conclusions
The main reason I recommend a course that is already several years old is because of its quality. Al Sweigart explains with love and dedication in every line of code he writes. It is designed for people who want to get into development, but it can surprise even experienced individuals. I got it for free during some sort of sale, if you know about it, don't hesitate to mention it in the comments!
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