Why Should I Care About Learning a Programming Language? What benefit will it give me? This was a question I used to ask myself because I could open a text file, write my configuration out, and find and replace elements of the file. This is what I was doing for a long, long time.
Fast forward a few years, and now, being a lot wiser, I see the errors in my ways. It is about predictability, being able to have a shell that you can supply variables into and have your script do data validation on that data to make sure you type your input correctly, whether that is making sure you type your IP addresses correctly or making sure your input conforms with any company policy on interface descriptions or device names. I have something else in mind rather than jumping right into some of the scripts that I have created.
What I am going to do over the next several posts, and possibly videos, is go over the basics of Python and build on the following:
Python Data Types
- Integers/Floats
- Strings
- Lists
- Dictionaries
- Sets
- Tuples
- Booleans
Python Statements
- If/Elif/Else
- For Loops
- While Loops
- Comprehensions
Python Functions
This foundation introduces some of the scripts I wrote for various tasks I wanted to automate. I do not feel that jumping right into these scripts would benefit anyone. I am a big proponent of learning what goes into my script. As such, it will make understanding the mechanics of why easier. Writing a post on this is what I solved with the script does not benefit anyone looking to learn. These posts will be written as I would teach someone with examples of what else you can do with the specific topic for that post.
Returning to the original question, Why Should I Care About Learning a Programming Language? Learning a programming language will let you automate mundane tasks to free up time to research new technology and learn new things!