Learning Python!

It's been a while since my last post.  Just been horribly busy with work and home stuff, and being in Montana it's damn hard to stay indoors!

Anyway for the past three weeks I've devoted myself to picking up a working knowledge of Python.  So far I like it!

The IRC channel I frequent is chock full of current|ex Amazon folks, Expedia, Disney, Mojo and a few other places that I'd consider 'Enterprise' level.  More than one handful of devops live in this channel so under a few actual, real DevOps Engineers I chose to start this adventure off with a book;

Introducing Python: Modern Computing in Simple Packages by Bill Lubanovic.

It' easy to read and follow.  I typically read some while at lunch and spend nights watching the Udemy videos that follow 'Automate The Boring Stuff with Python'.  Once the Udemy videos are done I'm considering paying for a month of Lynda.com and checking out what they have.

In any case, why did I start this? After doing the whole sysadmin thing for almost 15 years I'm feeling stagnant.  I mean sure every time you change employers or introduce some new application you are learning new things.  And while I don't want to switch paths straight into development, I do really enjoy pulling together some code and forming something new with it.

Also under advisement from the crew I chose PyCharm as an IDE.  Absolutely love it!  Very intuitive, helpful, and damn easy to learn.  Discovered virtenv's the other day and last week I wrote my first actual script and used it at work!

Anyway I've got my eyes set on a new price in town which would come with a new title.  We'll see.