Afterward

Congratulations! 🎉 You’ve learned the basics of Python and applied your knowledge to meaningful projects. You’ve made a game, visualized some data, and made a web application. From here, you can go in a number of different directions to continue developing your programming skills.

First, you should continue to work on meaningful projects that interest you. Programming is more appealing when you’re solving relevant and significant problems, and you now have the skills to engage in a variety of projects. You could invent your own game or write your own version of a classic arcade game. You might want to explore some data that’s important to you and make visualizations that show interesting patterns and connections. You could create your own web application or try to emulate one of your favorite apps.

Whenever possible, invite other people to try using your programs. If you write a game, let other people play it. If you make a visualization, show it to others and see if it makes sense to them. If you make a web app, deploy it online and invite others to try it out. Listen to your users and try to incorporate their feedback into your projects; you’ll become a better programmer if you do.

When you work on your own projects, you’ll run into problems that are challenging, or even impossible, to solve on your own. Keep finding ways to ask for help, and find your own place in the Python community. Join a local Python User Group or explore some online Python communities. Consider attending a PyCon near you as well.

You should strive to maintain a balance between working on projects that interest you and developing your Python skills in general. Many Python learning sources are available online, and a large number of Python books target intermediate programmers. Many of these resources will be accessible to you now that you know the basics and how to apply your skills. Working through Python tutorials and books will build directly on what you learned here and deepen your understanding of programming in general and Python in particular. Then when you go back to working on projects after focusing on learning about Python, you’ll be capable of solving a wider variety of problems more efficiently.

Congratulations on how far you’ve come, and good luck with your continued learning!