Python Certificate or Self Teach

I am deciding whether to pay the money and take a in-class 8 month python certificate course offered by University of Washington.

I've taken multiple online courses(mostly beginner ones). I can make simple codes to automate some of my work, however I struggle with more advanced things(although I really havent looked into them like classes/objects etc.)

Since so much stuff is available online its been hard for me to justify a certificate cost. Does anyone have experience and would say to do on or the other? If self teaching myself I just need to get the motivation which ebbs and flows. I think I tend to advance faster when Im asking questions. Perhaps looking into a tutor is a better idea.

 

Well, it depends on what you want to do. If you're coding as a hobby I'd say the cert is optional, but if you want to do it for a living the cert will get you interviews and potentially jobs.

The other thing to consider is that if this is your first programming language, learning good habits from the start will pay MASSIVE dividends down the line. And once you have one language mastered adding another isn't that hard. Once I was hired for programmer job with exactly zero knowledge of the language I'd be coding in. But, I had certs in other languages so I was productively fixing the previous idiot's code in a couple of days.

 

Tough question. It shouldn't take 8 months to learn Python if you know basic concepts, but from what I can see, I'm not sure they even teach the basics anymore. But I wouldn't pay for an 8-month course in a single language. Look at a full CS degree, or go the sys admin route and learn some scripting along the way. I think Python is a decent learning language, but it lacks some elements that teach good hygiene (flow and scope, to me, is a bit ambiguous in Python). It also mixes procedural and object-oriented paradigms, which can lead to poor program design. If you truly have a passion to code systems, go full CS and get the foundation you need. Even sys admin stuff requires scripting these days, but there's a whole other set of certs you need to go that route and you'll learn the scripting along the way.

If it's just a hobby, learn online and by experimenting.

 

I actually hate coding. Have a degree in EE and have figured that learning python scripting for automation/data processing is a very big plus in the certain field I’m in. I can already do a lot of basic stuff, but really it’s just making stuff work.

In my field python has become the #1 wanted language. I tend to be more in research and that they seem to prefer that language more.

I just haven’t gotten to that next level of programming. Taking a certificate course seems a waste of time, but having someone to gather info from I think is a lot better than trying to learn from the internet videos etc.

 

If it's not your core responsibility, I dont think getting a certificate is worth it. But if you're going to put python on a resume, be ready to talk about what you've done with it in an interview.

As far as learning the language goes, I think how you learn about the language can really have an impact on how well you learn it. I've been focusing on using the language documentation first instead of going to stack overflow and Google. I think it's much better for ones overall understanding, and knowing how to get to the docs right on your own computer can be handy.

 

I’ve got a friend in that course, also an EE. I’m assuming the 8 month is the 2 part certification program. His thought was that the course was good but overpriced compared to other certifications he could get elsewhere online. However looking for a job in the highly competitive Seattle area, he thought the UW name recognition would be beneficial.

Our company uses Python extensively (Engineering/Science field). If you don’t have formal training in programming/scripting, a formalized course can pay dividends in knowing how to do things correctly, vs just knowing enough to get it to work. Just getting it to work can be acceptable in some environments/academics, but if you want to excel in an enterprise environment, it helps to have a good coding foundation to build on to do it the right way. That could be provided by UW or another certificate educator for potentially less. Of course a certificate isn’t required, and you can do it on your own with good study discipline, as it will really come down to passing the interview. But an advantage of a certificate program is it takes all the guess work/self teaching motivation out of the equation and puts you on a path to get there.

 

I think this is the part I struggle with most. I can understand concepts etc fairly easily, have built scripts plotting 3d patterns, multiple subplots with thousands of data points etc. I can write most stuff individually, meaning parse this data set, plot that, etc but say combining it into an actual script to do multiple things and have classes etc I haven't been so good at. I haven't really studied that yet but up until now I always have questions and when I can bounce it off someone I can catch on pretty quick, but trying to read between lines of forums like stack overflow etc it just takes a lot longer.

Hence why I think the certificate would be good, but I know the first say 4 months might just be very redundant for me right now.

 

As an Engineer I can tell you that if you a have a EE, no one cares if you have a certificate to say that you can code in Python. EE is the catch all degree for with anything with electrons - Hardware, Software, Analog/Digital/RF/SI. . . A python class is a check box on a resume and a conversation, but shouldn't be a gate keeper for employment. If they want to know about it, they will ask you to code something for them regardless of any certificate.

However, if you learn best in a class like I do then there is merit to it. From a practical perspective 2-3 full days of professional class should be sufficient to go deep enough into just about any subject to get "proficient". Anything longer will just be confusing. After you have been using whatever it is, then you will understand what you need to know and get further training or go figure it out.

Most importantly if you take the class and don't use it, you will loose it.

Just remember that most software languages are similar. Pointers are pointers, structures are structures, loops are loops. . . Just different names and syntax but they eventually do the same thing. I've gone through so many languages at this point I can't remember them all and need to look up the syntax half the time anyway.