Al Sweigart
Automate the Boring Stuff with Python
Al Sweigart's free Python book, third edition — 24 chapters on scraping, spreadsheets, PDFs, file wrangling and GUI automation for non-programmers.
Beginner10+ hours
Readable, forgiving, and installed almost everywhere — Python is where most people who learn to program late end up, and for good reason. It's also the rare language where the beginner material is better than the intermediate material, ours included.
Five courses here. The right one depends less on your level than on what you want Python for.
Heading toward data? Python for Everybody is Dr. Chuck's data-first course — files, APIs, scraping, SQL and visualisation, with free autograded assignments and a gradebook. Want your computer to do your admin? Automate the Boring Stuff with Python is Al Sweigart's free book, now in its third edition: 24 chapters on scraping, spreadsheets, PDFs, file wrangling and GUI automation, written for people who don't intend to become developers. Want the computer science underneath? CS50's Introduction to Programming with Python runs ten weeks from functions to object orientation, with autograded problem sets, a week on unit testing and a final project you design.
The Official Python Tutorial is sixteen chapters maintained by the Python Software Foundation, from control flow to virtual environments. Read the framing carefully: it's written for programmers new to Python, not for people new to programming. Treat it as a map rather than a course. Learn Python — Full Course for Beginners is Mike Dane's four and a half hours for freeCodeCamp, variables through OOP in one pass, with no exercises to check yourself against — good as a first orientation, weak as your only source.
All five are beginner courses. Every one. Once you can write a script, this page has nothing further to offer: no Django, Flask or FastAPI, nothing on pandas or NumPy as subjects in their own right, nothing on packaging, testing, type hints or async. That's the honest shape of it — a strong on-ramp with no road after it.
Pick by destination, do the assignments rather than watching them, and expect to leave this page after your first working program. The distance between beginner Python and useful Python is exactly where we can't help yet.
Al Sweigart
Al Sweigart's free Python book, third edition — 24 chapters on scraping, spreadsheets, PDFs, file wrangling and GUI automation for non-programmers.
Harvard University
Harvard's CS50P — ten weeks from functions to OOP, with auto-graded problem sets, a unit testing week and a self-designed final project.
freeCodeCamp
Mike Dane's four-and-a-half-hour Python fundamentals video for freeCodeCamp — variables to OOP in one take, with no exercises to check your work.
Dr. Charles Severance
Dr. Chuck's data-first Python course — files, APIs, scraping, SQL and visualisation, with free autograded assignments and a gradebook at py4e.com.
Python Software Foundation
Python's own tutorial, maintained by the PSF — 16 chapters from control flow to virtual environments. Written for programmers new to Python, not new to code.