I’m currently learning Python, with the aim of adding to my scripting skills and seeing how Python can be used within general projects and testing projects.

Initially, I’m learning via the web site version of ‘Learn Python The Hard Way‘, which actually provides a gentle introduction to Python if you’re a developer. It works in the form of small exercises which introduce something new and then asks you to type the code into a text editor (Notepad++ suggested) and then run it in a Python environment. It’s really written for someone who needs an introduction to coding and Python, but the slow pace means its easy to follow and you can experiment easily with the example scripts.

By exercise 33, we’ve already covered quite a lot of Python’s commands, structures and elements – including variables, strings, input, using files, functions, logic operators, if-elif-else, while loops, for loops and lists.

Even at this early stage, I can see that Python looks a very powerful language for scripting and – so far at least – it’s easy to read and follow the code.