How Long Does It Take To Learn Python?

How Long Does It Take To Learn Python? Time is an important factor when we talk about anything in this universe. When we start learning the python programming language, here also we can’t neglect time. Every python newbie wants to know a definite answer to this general question “How Long Does It Take To Learn Python”.

How Long Does It Take To Learn Python

In this article, you are going to get an answer to your obvious questions about python programming language. So keep reading this article till the end and I hope you will not get disappointed.

For every python beginner, it’s a normal question that how long it takes to learn Python, how long you can expect to be at this before reaching a certain level of proficiency, and what you can expect in terms of what it takes to go from not being able to code to be able to code.

So let’s start with the question of how long does it take to learn Python and, or in other words, how long does it take to learn to code in Python programming language.

Now talking about this question, I can tell you that this is one of those questions in which no one can give you a definite or fixed answer. Actually, no one knows the exact time in which you can learn python. However, I will try my best to give you an approximate answer with the help of some logic and reasons.

No one can give an exact answer to this question because every person has a different IQ level and learning capacity. You can’t say exactly how much time your best friend will take to learn python programming or how much time your classmate will take to learn to code in python. But of course, you can predict the approximate time in which they can learn it.

If you grab things faster in your mind or you learn at a faster rate then we can say that you will learn python taking lesser time than someone who learns at a smaller rate. But it also depends upon how regular you are while learning to code.

When we talk about different programming languages and their ease of learning, Python is one of the easiest programming languages to learn. Python is a high-level programming language that is much easier to understand and learn as compared to many other languages. Python code is very similar to the normal English language. Reading the python code will feel like reading English sentences. It is designed and created in a way that makes it feel simpler and easier to learn and a bit better than other programming languages.

Now you want to learn python programming or you are already learning it, python is a high-level programming language that is easy to learn as compared to other programming languages. I started learning with C programming which is a middle-level language and is a bit difficult to learn than other languages.

But in python, you won’t find it difficult to understand and learn. So like any other programming language, Python also has different levels of learning like beginner, intermediate, and advance. So it also depends on which level you want to master and after that, it is also an important question that how long will it take to get a job after learning python.

And then you might be wondering how long it takes to get a job after learning python or how long it takes to learn to code in it. So let’s decode it now.

When you just starting with python, it will take about half an hour to go from scratch to writing your first line of Python code, which is a universal program for newbies of any programming language, that’s hello world. For writing your first line of code or printing “Hello World” in python, you have to do nothing but to install Python and then:

  • Open Python editor (you can use IDLE).
  • Write this simple one-line code, print(“Hello World”)
  • Save your program with any name with a .py extension. Example: hello.py
  • Run this program.

You can write simple programs that are similar to print hello world, or slightly more complicated than that, but all of very basic level.

For installing python and writing all these basic programs, you can take help from Youtube and you can figure out how to do that with a decent tutorial.

Within time span of half an hour or less, you will feel like going from no programming to programming step one.

After completing this step, you have the next level and at this level, you can start with the basics of coding in python and start to write real programs. In my experience, you can start learning the basics in two different ways:

First Approach:

This approach is simple and by following this approach Whether you can refer to a tutorial that will help you to understand and learn fundamental ideas in Python programming like variables, if-else statements, methods, objects, control flow, etc, and will also help you to understand how software programs actually work.

There are many tutorials available online which you can refer to and that will take you to step by step through all these basic concepts mentioned above. You can refer to Youtube or any other online platform like Coursera, Udemy, Udacity, Edx, etc where you can easily learn these all basics.

Second Approach:

Now let’s talk about the second approach and it’s my favorite because it leads you to build a real software program and as you will go to build that software program, you will learn all the fundamentals of Python while you are on the way of building that software.

This second approach is my favorite because you can start putting all those newly learned things into practice and you will apply those concepts directly in creating real-world software that will give you the experience of how to use those concepts. In this way, you will get lots of knowledge. While you are trying to create real-world software, you will learn every small to the large concept that will be used in that software, and in this way you will learn many concepts including some high-level concepts.

Now, some of you can think that this is a very weird approach, how can a newbie just start with creating real-world software if they don’t have any knowledge of python programming. But I think this is the only way in which you might feel some difficulty at the beginning but you will definitely get very good results at the end.

When you will learn some concepts and apply those concepts at that time to build the software, it will help you a lot in learning those concepts practically. I would say it might take 15 to 30 half-hour sessions for learning the very basics of it.

Again it is not the exact time in which you will learn python, it would vary with learners but it is an approximate time span. After typing codes for 8 to 15 hours, it is possible that you will start understanding basic syntax and how codes are written. You will start getting comfortable with typing codes. Also, after spending so many hours on coding, you will be able to find the errors in the code, you will understand what’s wrong with your code, or is it working properly and you can fix it up to a certain level.

That’s why you can assume learning Python in 30 days with regular or daily learning and practicing it. Because daily coding practice is the way to improve your coding skills, it is that daily practice of writing the code, etc.

This is the way in which you will improve your programming ability and you will become familiar with Python. Here comes the next level, getting comfortable with Python.

Comfort level means when you feel confident while writing codes in Python for yourself as well as when you feel confident and find it easy writing codes for others.

Are you planning to write python codes daily for 10 years? Are you planning to complete the 10,000-hour rule? Having an idea in mind to become an expert if you write codes for 10 years on a daily basis and 20 hours per week.

Now expert is a fun word, so I don’t mean mastery here, I mean a level of competence and experience that you feel good is enough for now.

10,000 hours is just a theory and it’s a number, there is not something real 10,000 hour exists. It depends upon you only who can make it possible and become master in 10,000 hours.

Now suppose a student who is studying computer science going to school/college gets a total of 500 hours of the session. Again it’s just an approximate number but not an exact number of sessions. So 500 hours of sessions mean a maximum of 500 hours of writing codes. This 500 hour is equal to one-fourth(1/4) of the total time of an employee in the office which is approximately 2000 hours.

So when you compare these data, you will find that a four-year programming degree is equal to approximately three months to 6 months of work experience. And this is not bad but this is cool if you already have got so much experience in school/college level or Bootcamp or any other similar level.

Because going to school/college or joining a boot camp will give you the opportunity to complete that many hours of coding sessions. This opportunity will enhance your skills and will let you gain more experience and knowledge in your work.

Your main goal should be learning to program, it doesn’t matter from where you are learning. You can even refer to online platforms and can learn at home. The more hours you will spend on getting experience, the better you will become in that particular work.

Now, this is not wrong or anything like that, but getting comfortable in it will usually take somewhere from 1-2 years. Becoming comfortable means you might not be the best programmer of any team, but you will be at least a good programmer in that team.

So approximately working for 2 thousand to 4 thousand hours will make you a great programmer and it may be equal to 1-2 years of work experience.

So if you’re reading this you could say it probably takes an hour to know how to get started with Python and then it will probably take you 8-15 hours to feel like you understand what programming is about and you can write something and it feels pretty good.

So if you can work for so long and if you can practice coding for 200-500 hours and if you can build software or any project in 200-500 hours of learning and practice, Then probably you are ready to get a job.

When we will talk about 2000-4000 hours, it means that you will become a great programmer in so long time and you will be so comfortable in it that if anybody will ask you “hey! Can you create a software for me” and you will say yes I can do it.

And after 10,000 hours of experience, it will become your daily routine like eating, sleeping, coding.

Conclusion:

So now it comes to how much hours should you practice writing codes everyday. Should you write codes on a daily basis? And many other similar questions. Yes, you should practice writing codes daily and it will help you to improve your coding skills quickly.

The programmers who are working for 10-20 years feel writing codes as easy as eating pizza. Similarly, if you write codes daily, you will feel very easy writing codes after some weeks or months.

But if you are a beginner, learning code will probably look like learning rocket science. The more hours you will invest in learning Python programming language, or any programming language, you will become better day by day.

How many quality hours can you invest in learning python? If you are ready to invest hours daily on this excellent programming language, you will become excellent in it soon.

In short and simple words, If you are just want to get started with python, it will take about an hour. But if you want to get a job writing code in python, you really need to invest your daily hour and regular effort in learning it and getting confident in it.

However, if someone will try a little hard learning python, it is one of the easiest languages in the programming world.

I hope you found the answer to how long does it take to learn python.

If you are a Python newbie, how long would you take to learn python? and if you are an expert, how long did you take to learn python?

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