Python for Everybody Specialization

Python for Everybody on Coursera is free to audit. You get full access to all five courses in the specialization (videos and readings) without paying anything. The certificate is optional and costs money. Dr. Charles Severance (Dr. Chuck) from the University of Michigan teaches it, and it is one of the most accessible Python courses online. Finish the whole arc and you can write Python that reads and cleans a file, pulls data from a web API, scrapes a page, and stores what it finds in a SQL database, which is the everyday toolkit for scripting and data work. Take it if you are starting from zero and want every concept explained slowly, which is why it suits people coming back to study years after school. Skip it if you already know another language: the first two courses will feel like a crawl, and CS50P teaches the language itself in 36 hours against this specialization's 120. The honest limitation is that this is video and quiz work, not a build-heavy course. Nothing in it makes you start a program from an empty file, so write your own small scripts alongside it or very little of it will stick.

Python for Everybody has over 2.5 million learners enrolled across the Coursera specialization (source: Coursera course page, coursera.org/specializations/python).