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Learn Python the Hard Way

Python Tutorial for Beginners: Get Zed Shaw's 4-week crash course and start building web apps with Python.

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by Zed Shaw

Learn Python The Hard Way is a Python tutorial I wrote to teach programming to people who do not know how to code. It assumes you are probably a power user of your computer, and then takes you from nothing to programming simple games. After finishing this course you should be ready for many of the other programming books out there.

-- Zed Shaw

The following is a suggested schedule for this Python tutorial, but you may take the course at your own pace. The book is included in PDF and ePub form and you will learn from both the book and the videos.

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CHAPTER 1: Week 0: Setting up Your System for Python Programming

CHAPTER 2: Week 1

CHAPTER 3: Week 2

CHAPTER 4: Week 3

CHAPTER 5: Week 4

Reviews

Average Rating:

  • by Archie Abrams,

    Great course for a beginner!

    I'm a business guy who was looking to gain a solid understanding of the development language (Python) that my engineers were using to create our web application. I spend a long time trying to learn Python from all the free content that exists on the web. But I soon realized that I was spending too much time trying to find out what I should learn instead of just learning it. I needed a course that structured the content for me. And Zed's course did just that. Zed's course taught me the fundamentals of Python to the point where I was able to look at Python code and understand what was happening and also build my own small web applications. If you're not technical and want a great introduction to one of the best programming languages out there, then take Zed's course. My only critique is that Zed sometimes spent a little too much time just typing the code, instead of explaining the underlying principles.

  • by Derrick Schwabe,

    Thoroughly enjoyed reading, and especially watching, this course. I have very little programming experience but was able to jump in and complete the course just fine. As someone who had already gotten halfway through the PDF book a few months prior, I was skeptical if the Udemy course would be necessary. So I tried it anyway, from the beginning. Zed is awesome! His videos make the course so much easier, and funner to learn. And I learned a TON. This course, if you do everything Zed tells you, will last a lot longer than what you would expect. Great value and an excellent product.

  • by Vivek M. Chawla,

    Zed Shaw is what a Udemy Instructor SHOULD be!

    The instructor of this course, Zed Shaw, has been very active with this course. He's listened to feedback from students, and even re-created content in several instances when he thought he could deliver a higher-quality experience. That's VERY impressive to me! Thank you, Mr. Shaw for the attention and effort you have put into this course. I can't wait to become a Python Ninja...the Hard Way! :-)

See all 6 user reviews

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Average Rating:

6 Reviews
  • Course Requirements...

  • This is an introductory course, so no prior knowledge is needed. The course can be learned through all platforms.
  • Over 15 lectures and 9.5 hrs of content!
  • 50+ hands-on exercises to practice Python by coding real programs.
  • Video tutorials that show you how to do each exercise in case you get stuck.
  • Discussion board to ask Zed questions directly and get help on the problems.
  • A beginner's guide. You do not need to have programming background to take this course!
  • Everything is recorded so you can learn at your own pace!

Instructors

Zed is the creator of the Mongrel Web Server, and its language independent successor, Mongrel2, as well as Fret War - a community for guitar players to learn from and compete with each other.

He is also the author of "Learn Python the Hard Way," an ebook he published in 2010. It has been downloaded over 300,000 times and is one of the definitive textbooks for first-time developers to learn coding in Python.

Zed has been speaking publicly at conferences since 2000 and all over the world. Most recently he spoke at PyCon 2011 as well as taught Learn Python the Hard Way at PyCon. He spoke at Mountain West RubyConf 2011 as well. He is highly regarded as a public speaker on technology topics and just generally hilarious when he does it.