Hey Pythonista,

I still remember learning Python for the first time back in 2016.

Bob and I had just decided it was time to learn something together, not just for the skill, but to give us more of a reason to chat every day (that's a different story altogether!).

I'm not someone who just "gets" things the first time around. I can't just read a book or watch a video and immediately know how to action the concept.

When I was learning with Bob, I remember the frustration of watching a YouTube video, or reading documentation and thinking, "okay... now what?". 

I could understand the concept I was learning in theory, but applying it to my own code? Get outta here! 😆

It was pretty disheartening! 

As the weeks went on, we realised that the learning was becoming tedious because we were just reading and tinkering with code on the REPL or in local, scrappy scripts.

That was when we created our first coding challenges. 

We had the idea to scrape a website then do some calculations on the data we pulled down. Simple in theory, but it pushed us to take the many concepts we'd been reading and writing about and put them to good use!

Suddenly I had a real need to use requests beyond just playing.

"Ooo, so you pair requests with BeautifulSoup! Now I get it!"

The satisfaction of taking these building blocks and putting together something actually usable is something I'll never forget.

It's also helped me create a whole library of code snippets that I reuse quite often.

I can safely say that it was building solutions in these different scenarios that got me past feeling like a beginner.

So, if you're reading this and are finding the initial stages of your Python journey challenging, maybe shake it up a little with a challenge!

To help people engage their inner builder, we've relaunched these challenges in the Pybites Community. Our wonderful Community Manager, Sherry, is spearheading the effort.

The first challenge out of the gate is to work with the NASA images API.

You can do as much or as little as you want. 

There's no expectation, just the hope that you'll be inspired to put the books and videos down, get your fingers on the keyboard, and see what magic you come up with.

Do yourself a favour, check it out, and start building!

See you in the Community :)

Julian