Motivation: I pick a useful or fun project (like building a tiny robot). A great example of this approach is the free book Automate the Boring Stuff With Python.
Style and good practices: its hard to learn the nuance and power of a tool unless you learn from an expert. (What is "pythonic"?) Exercism.io is perfect for this. Your solutions to language specific learning tracks get feedback from the community. You can also see other's solutions and help them improve. I learn way faster when I have opportunities to teach the same subject.
Open source projects are invaluable for the same reasons. It is motivating to contribute to a group effort, and you get feedback, or your PRs won't get merged. There are tons of projects that are seeking people who are new to open source. Get started with open source:
For me the two biggest challenges are:
Motivation: I pick a useful or fun project (like building a tiny robot). A great example of this approach is the free book Automate the Boring Stuff With Python.
Style and good practices: its hard to learn the nuance and power of a tool unless you learn from an expert. (What is "pythonic"?) Exercism.io is perfect for this. Your solutions to language specific learning tracks get feedback from the community. You can also see other's solutions and help them improve. I learn way faster when I have opportunities to teach the same subject.
Open source projects are invaluable for the same reasons. It is motivating to contribute to a group effort, and you get feedback, or your PRs won't get merged. There are tons of projects that are seeking people who are new to open source. Get started with open source:
Really helpful