Want to learn what Python variables are and what you can do with them? That’s exactly what we’ll cover in this article. Now that you’re at Part 2 of our Python series, it’s time to learn about Python variables. (Yes, Part 2 means there is also a Part 1. For those who missed it, Part 1 discusses Python’s data types and some basic mathematical operations. It also introduces the concept of a function.

This article contains everything you need to know for how to reverse a list in Python. Have you ever wondered how to write a program in Python that checks if a word reads the same backward as forward? Or have you simply wondered how to write your name backward with the help of Python? If your answer is yes to either of these questions, then keep reading. Here, you will learn how to use lists in Python and how to sort or reverse list elements in the desired order.

Want to become proficient with Python operators? In this comprehensive guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know about the types of operators in Python, their differences, and syntax and explore cases with easy-to-follow code examples. What Are Operators in Python? Operators are special symbols used to perform different operations on variables and values. The variable or value that the operator operates on is called the operand. In Python, operators are divided into the following groups:

Everything you need to get started with lists and list comprehension in Python. Here comes the New Year — the perfect time for your own personal re-evaluation and a retrospective of the last year. It’s also a great time to sit down and write a list of New Year's resolutions that you are planning to achieve in the incoming year. Are you going to write it on paper or will you reach for your laptop and, like any other nerd, use Excel or some other tool like Python to save and maintain this list?

Wondering how to get the most out of Python dictionaries? In this comprehensive guide, we’ll cover all you need to know to effectively use dictionaries in your studies and in real-world projects. What Is a Python Dictionary? A Python dictionary is yet another very useful and important data type. Basically, Python dictionaries are an unordered collection of data values. However, in contrast to other data types, a dictionary’s elements are key-value pairs instead of single data values.

Want to learn Python but think you have to know something before you start? You don’t! That’s the whole point of learning, as you’ll see. So you want to learn Python, but something is stopping you. What is it? The usual misconception that stops people from doing something is that they should know everything, even before they start learning. This misconception makes you think everybody was born with their knowledge and that you’re never going to reach their level.

Python provides a lot of libraries to help developers with their work. Which of them will be the most popular in 2020? And which are worth your time? Here are our picks for the 13 top Python libraries. Python is one of the most popular programming languages. Many developers choose Python because it’s easy to learn and good for varied tasks, including data science, machine learning, data analysis and visualization, and web or desktop app development.

In the face of a constantly changing labor market, the concept of lifelong learning has become more important than ever. Humans continue to evolve, so any professional wishing to be on a roll should stay up-to-date with technological trends. But how does one do that conveniently? Let’s face it: no industry is stable. No matter what your profession is, your environment is continuously undergoing processes that redefine the game.

Sometimes you need a random number or element. How can Python help? The truth is that randomness is all around us. Think about the lottery, a dice roll, or the (extreme) randomness of your office’s Secret Santa workings. In this article, we'll discuss pseudo-randomness, how it's different from true randomness, and how it can be applied in Python to generate random numbers. We'll also delve into some more advanced topics, like reproducible coding with random numbers and using the choice() and choices() functions to return random string elements from a list.

Both lists and arrays are used to store data in Python. Moreover, both data structures allow indexing, slicing, and iterating. So what’s the difference between an array and a list in Python? In this article, we’ll explain in detail when to use a Python array vs. a list. Python has lots of different data structures with different features and functions. Its built-in data structures include lists, tuples, sets, and dictionaries.

Learn Python, save lives. Yep, you heard me. No, I’m not talking about dragging babies from burning buildings or solving tensions in the Middle East. And no, perhaps you won’t win a slew of civic hero awards anytime soon or collect the keys to the city. But there are certainly some compelling reasons why Python is so popular. Among them are some life-saving applications. In this article, we’ll look at the many and varied uses of Python, the characteristics that make it so incredibly popular, as well as some of the downsides you should be aware of before choosing Python as your new language-learning challenge.

Beware! This is not a motivational article. If you are not interested in how to start coding, don't read this. However, if you want to know how and where to start learning programming, please continue reading. When I started to think about learning to code, I decided to write about women's stories because of the stereotypes they face. Many women want to try coding but are afraid of it.

You’re in a hurry! Does your boss want you to finally learn to code? Or would you like to start a career as a programmer? We'll show you how to learn Python fast and how long it will take. I assume you've already decided to become a programmer. You know it's a good opportunity. You browse job postings, and you can't believe how many are on the market. But you don't know which language to learn.

Let’s clarify first. This article is not about snakes, it’s about coding in the fastest-growing programming language. That language happens to be named Python. In this article, we’ll go through a number of inspiring ways to use Python. So, what is Python used for? Why Code in Python? You have probably heard about many different programming languages, including JavaScript, Java, C++, Ruby, and others. Why should you choose Python?

Buy courses individually or in packs! Find out what courses are in each course bundle and learn the skills you need. Now, you can get them with over a 70% discount! At Vertabelo Academy, you can buy online courses individually or in bundles. Bundles, to put it simply, are packs of courses that teach you one technology (e.g., SQL) or one particular topic (e.g., data analytics.). Below, we present the list of our currently available bundles.

Chances are you’ve heard about the infinite possibilities Python gives you both in your professional and private life. When you sit down at your desk, full of motivation and eagerness, the question that probably comes to your mind is: how long does it take to learn Python? You’ll find the answer here! Professionals around the world love Python. According to IEEE Spectrum, an industry magazine issued by the largest international engineering organization, Python is the most popular programming language (see how others were ranked here).

Want to start learning Python but struggling to find quality resources? Well, they're out there—and we'll review them here. In no particular order, here are the best online resources to learn Python. Courses 1. Vertabelo Academy Vertabelo Academy is an interactive e-learning platform that offers nine Python courses. Among them, you can find two learning paths: programming and data science. Programming path: Python Basics Part 1. This is the first of a two-part course that covers everything you need to know about Python so you can start writing your own scripts and applications.

How to Work Better and Faster with SQL Basics? Data-driven marketing isn’t the future – it’s what the best marketers are using for their work right now. In this article, we give you the lowdown on an amazing marketing hack that more and more employers are demanding. Read on and find out if SQL can boost your campaigns by helping you pursue a more data-driven approach. If you’re interested in learning more, take our SQL Basics course.

Trick or treat! Halloween is coming, the festival of ghosts and monsters! At Vertabelo Academy, it’s time for paranormal sales activities and a Halloween promotion. We also have a special Halloween challenge: a haunted SQL crossword puzzle. Even if you don’t have experience in SQL, you can solve it! Halloween Promotion Halloween is coming! Many of you are probably getting ready for costume parties and deciding whether to dress up as Dracula or Lord Vader this year.

The IT field observes a massive increase in new tools, languages, and solutions each year. It's hard to keep up with all the updates and recent technology even if you're an experienced developer. As such, it’s no wonder that beginners often feel a bit lost when entering the industry. They may deliberate over where to start or what to learn in the first place. An old programming language or a current trend in technology?

In a real-world setting, you often only have a small dataset to work with. Models trained on a small number of observations tend to overfit and produce inaccurate results. Learn how to avoid overfitting and get accurate predictions even if the available data is scarce. Big data and data science are concepts often heard together. It is believed that nowadays there are large amounts of data and that data science can draw valuable insights from all these terabytes of information.

Data science is hot right now. If you want to learn more about it, where should you go? Online, of course! Check out our favorite data science sites. Whether you’re a beginner or a pro, these are the sites you should know. Not so long ago, if you wanted information on a topic like data science, you had to look for it—either at your local library or at a university.

If you search “will robots take my job” in your browser, you will find a website that lists the automation risk level for each occupation within two decades. This simple website is based on Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne's research. In the report “The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation?”, they examined over 700 occupations in the US, using a Gaussian process classifier to estimate the probability of automation for those jobs.

There is so much hype around the data scientist role these days that when a company needs a specialist to get some insights from data, the first idea is to look for a data scientist. But is it really the best option? Let's see how the roles of data scientists and data analysts differ and why you may want to hire an analyst before any other role. Data Scientist or Data Analyst?

You have probably heard about the concept of massive open online courses (MOOCs) in the last few years. It is an alternative to formal education and is seen by some as the way of the future. Have you taken an online interactive course? Have you tried to create one? In this article, I’ll describe my personal experience with MOOCs and how I grew from a student to a content creator.

Already know some SQL basics and want to take your PostgreSQL skills to the next level? Learn how to create, use, and manage your own functions in PostgreSQL. We’re pleased to announce the launch of our new online course: Writing User-Defined Functions in PostgreSQL. This course is aimed at people who already know some basic SQL and greatly benefits not only PostgreSQL developers and database administrators but also anyone interested in database programming (especially through PostgreSQL).

When searching for employees, employers usually look at social media profiles. LinkedIn is one of the most popular sites that employers check. We know it well at Vertabelo. That's why we’ve made it easier for our users to brag about what they've learned in our Academy. Here's a quick guide on how to do it, step by step. We will go through an example using one of our basic courses—SQL Basic.

Python is one of the fastest growing programming languages in the world. It is becoming equally popular among novice and experienced programmers and taking over rival languages such as C++ and Java. One of the biggest reasons why Python's popularity has skyrocketed is its simplicity and flexibility. Even people with no prior programming knowledge can learn Python within weeks. In fact, Python has all the characteristics to become the lingua franca of coding in the near future.

Learning is the gift that keeps on giving. Find out how you can gift an online course. So you’ve decided to gift a course but don’t know how to do it? It’s very easy! Following is an example of how to do this using our introductory course on Python. First, pick and navigate to the page with the course you’d like to gift. Click on the “Gift this course” option that is visible on the right-hand side.

Why coding is a vital skill no matter where you work. In 2019, more businesses than ever before are looking to hire smart, technologically proficient candidates. As advances in technology increase, a growing number of industries are relying on computer systems and software to help manage their data and achieve their goals, making coding skills more of a necessity than it has ever been. Many people think that coding is a niche that only applies to specific tech-related jobs.

Learning to code can be fun and absorbing but it can also be a rocky road at first. If you have a feeling that your learning process could be faster and more efficient, take a look at this list of common programming mistakes. Maybe you’re making some of them? When I first started learning to code it was a time of constant fire in my belly—I was so excited about every new issue and every new technology!

Providing various types of data in a unified way is one of the core concepts of web communication. In recent years, JSON text files have become extremely popular due to their simplicity and universality. Vertabelo Academy’s recent course—How to Read and Write JSON Files in Python—explains how to manipulate JSON files in Python. If you work with Python and want to learn a practical skill in high demand, you’re in the right place.

Do you know the feeling when you’ve read the theory behind some programming concepts but you’re at a loss when it comes to writing actual code? Vertabelo Academy’s new course—Python Data Structures in Practice—addresses this exact problem by explaining the practical aspects of basic data structures. The course discusses frequent use cases and teaches you optimal solutions to common problems. As a bonus, you’ll create a real Python game!

Are you a geek? Today being a geek means being smart and passionate about certain complicated subjects like mathematics, programming, science fiction films, and fantasy books. That sounds cool. So why not join the celebration of Geek Pride Day on May 25th? What’s a Geek? Let’s first define who can be called a geek. According to Wikipedia, this term was originally used to describe "eccentric or non-mainstream people". Today the word typically refers to an expert or a person who is passionate about some hobby or intellectual pursuit.

Excel spreadsheets are quickly becoming obsolete thanks to the emergence of the latest data analytics tools and languages such as Python, Java, R, and Microsoft HDInsight. However, a large number of companies still use digital spreadsheets, creating a lot of problems for modern business data analysts. Analyzing data through excel is a poor choice because of reasons like errors in data validation, a poor shared workbook feature, no multi-user editing, inaccurate data, and safety concerns, making it necessary for you to switch to better and advanced alternatives.

Python can help you get more insights from your data, make better-informed data-driven decisions, automate many routine activities, and increase the ROI from your marketing campaigns. Interested? Then let’s see how exactly Python can boost your marketing efforts. How Can Your Marketing Activities Benefit from Python? As a marketer, you probably face a number of challenges: Ads are getting more expensive. Previously profitable marketing channels, like content marketing, are becoming crowded.

Data analyst is a relatively new position available at several companies. It’s also a high-salary specialization without a complex learning curve. Thus, many professionals are looking to make a career switch to this burgeoning field. In this article, I’ll explain what skills you need to become a junior data analyst. We’ll also review some tips for making this career change and see what an entry-level data analyst salary looks like.

How do you visualize the results of an SQL query? You usually need to use multiple tools to achieve that. Why not use a tool that communicates with SQL directly and can perform any data analysis task? R is a data-oriented programming language that uses packages (libraries) to help you with nearly every imaginable data analysis task and more. Some of these packages allow R connect to an SQL database so you can query it and perform any desired action on the result set.

It looks like everybody in the tech world is using GitHub. Wondering if you need it too? Let’s have a brief beginner-friendly overview to see what Git and GitHub are and how you can start working with them right away. What is Git? We are going to start with defining what Git is and how you can benefit from it. Git is an open-source distributed version control system. What does this mean in simple terms?

Freelancers are workers who, for one reason or another, decided to work independently. Flexibility and continuous training are usually what interest programmers who approach this career. You might have a lot of questions and wonder: what does it take to become a freelance software developer? In this article, we will give you some tips on how to approach this career and become a successful freelance software developer. Tips to Become a Successful Freelance Software Developer Like all jobs, freelancing comes with its pros and cons.

If you have basic knowledge about Python and are looking for an IDE to work with on your own computer, consider the Jupyter Notebook. It is a good tool, especially for Data Science projects. What is Jupyter Notebook? Jupyter Notebook is an open-source server-client application used to create and run mainly Data Science projects. Where does its name come from? JUPYTER is an acronym of Julia, Python, and R, because they were the first programming languages supported by this editor.

The PyCharm IDE is one of the most popular editors used by professional Python developers and programmers. But if you are a beginner, don’t worry, it can help you too! Find out how to create Python projects using PyCharm and what basic features can help you write code more efficiently. The PyCharm IDE is one of the most popular editors used by professional Python developers and programmers.

Python was my love at first sight. It was at the very beginning of my interest in programming when I took my first Python course, and I instantly fell in love with this language. Unfortunately, I had few opportunities to work professionally in the Python environment, but I kept learning after hours, just for fun, until my new job became too demanding and I simply had no more time for my coding hobby.

This tutorial will show you how to install the PyCharm IDE on your own computer–whether you have Windows or Ubuntu. To start developing with the PyCharm IDE, you need to download and install it on your computer’s operating system. PyCharm is an editor developed by the JetBrains company. As of today, it is the most popular IDE used by Python developers. Knowing this, JetBrains delivers PyCharm in three versions: Professional (full-featured IDE), Community (lightweight IDE, not full-featured), and Educational (community IDE with added education features).

Ever wondered how you can use Python to create stunning data visualizations? In the first part of this series, we saw how to draw line plots and histograms using the matplotlib library. We also saw how to change the default size of a plot and how to add titles, axes, and legends to a plot. In this article, we’ll see a few more types of plots that can be drawn using the matplot library with pro tips on how to improve them.

At some point in your Python journey, you’ll definitely need to work with dates, times, or both. Learn all the basics of date and time in Python with this short tutorial. Need to calculate how long it’s been since a given date? Working with date and time objects in Python? In this beginner’s guide, we’ll take a look at how to write programs with these two key data types in Python.

Want to know how Python is used for plotting and data visualization? Interested in learning one of the most commonly used data visualization libraries in Python? If so, you’re in the right place. In this installment of a two-part tutorial, we’ll learn how to use matplotlib, one of the most commonly used data visualization libraries in Python. Over the course of both articles, we’ll create different types of graphs, including:

Even if you’re just starting your Python journey, you’ve most likely come across Python sets. But do you know how to use them effectively? This article aims to cover all the main Python set operations to give you a better feel for when and how to use this important data structure. What Are Python Sets? First, let’s start with the basics. A set is a built-in type in Python that has a number of important characteristics:

Python is one of the most frequently used programming languages for financial data analysis, with plenty of useful libraries and built-in functionality. In this article, you’ll see how Python’s machine learning libraries can be used for customer churn prediction. Customer churn is a financial term that refers to the loss of a client or customer—that is, when a customer ceases to interact with a company or business. Similarly, the churn rate is the rate at which customers or clients are leaving a company within a specific period of time.

Learn how the T-SQL data manipulation language (DML) can help you control the information inside your SQL Server database. Do you work with SQL Server? Interested in learning more about the T-SQL language? Then you’re in the right place! We’re excited to introduce our new online course: How to Insert, Update, or Delete Data in MS SQL Server. In this course, you’ll learn about the data manipulation language (DML) statements in T-SQL.