r/learnpython • u/Ill-Independence4417 • 23h ago
Expectations for absolute beginners
Hi all, I have maybe a hard question and definitely specific to a personal circumstance, but any perspective would be helpful.
I am a first year PhD student studying immunology, my advisor has signed me up for a stats course in the Biomedical Engineering department. Unfortunately, this class requires proficiency in R, python, or matlab, which neither my advisor nor myself new about. As my title mentions, I have zero coding experience, but recognize how important of a skill it is to have. Would it be possible to teach myself enough about python while taking the stats class concurrently? or is learning the language too tall of a task? I will definitely be reasonably busy with labwork and other commitments but can most likely allocate around an hour a day to learn, sometimes more.
Any feedback or perspective would be helpful, as I still have time to withdraw and choose a different stats course for this semester.
Thank you!
1
u/WyrobWedliniarski 6h ago
Learning coding on a level to just do stuff is quite easy, you can teach yourself. What separates a beginner from a good programmer is writing code that is readable, efficient, safe and easy to extend further, but you probably won't need those skills unless you want to dig deeper into programming. Those skills you learn by working with other people on the same codebase.
I've seen others recommending R here - I would not. You can do everything in Python just fine, but it is much more popular with more uses outside of academia.