Er, that’s just an implementation detail. Purely a matter of convenience.
Not sure how knowing the basics of some programming language will help those not working in the programming field. Would come in handy for an IT person and those working in academia, but not really anywhere else.
I believe OP is going for finance type roles. Python is useful there for prototyping financial models.
The line between ‘IT person’ and analyst/sales/trader/what have you is increasingly becoming blurred.
Haha, nice one. Sure, those professions use a little bit of programming to get one or two tasks done, but it’s just the “Excel” programming of the 21st century.
Also I differentiate IT from programmers. Former just means working with technology, anywhere from help-desk to server admin which can involve some automation. Programming is making stuff from scratch - completely different.
It helps with thinking skills, but only up to a point.
For logic you need to study discrete math, not simple scripting.
Python is now used in various financial fields. It’s useful for quantitative finance, Fintech is the next big thing and uses python, automatic trading is also gaining ground. It’s used for more and more.
And most of these jobs are highly competitive. I have a 4.0 GPA from Uni and some various work experiences, leadership roles, speak multiple languages, etc. So does everyone else. And you’re competing against Ivy League grads who are in STEM as well. Its one more thing to set you apart. To show you can learn and have the ability to think in different ways.
Financial theories can be grasped. They’re looking for people who are able to think differently. It’s good to say you can use the basics of python since most financial institutions now offer coding classes to their employees and continued education.
Ok so it’s like I said above, more like the new excel (and you can do a lot in excel). So instead of just general python, you probably want to focus on specific uses like jupyter, numpy, visualization, etc.
Maybe that’s a good way to start actually, just fire up a Jupyter notebook and go through an online tutorial. Then you could try and model up something you are interested in, once you are comfortable. That way you are not wasting time stuffing around installing stuff.
If you’re not totally clueless and want a good challenge, I recommend learning python along with machine learning at the same time. It’s a popular combo. There are a lot of blogs and github repos. Look for tutorials about libraries like numpy or Keras.
Google stuff for udemy self-driving car and openai gym.
If you like video courses, you can use the linkedin learning trial free for 30 days. After the completion of courses, you get little badges to put on your linkedin profile.
o’reilly learning is also good. It has books and video courses. It has a free 7-day trial that you can just keep reusing with new email addresses (there’s no email confirmation).
Oh, that’s a cool function. Will have to check it out.
I hate Jupyter notebook. It’s really crashy.
I use Spyder.
Ok we are starting to geek out here 
I have started to learn python in regards to finance from code academy. I must admit, coding isn’t the most natural to me. I’m making some progress slowly and finished up being comfortable with functions.
I’m actually doing a uni class on it, but the professor is garbage. He is obviously good at python, but awful at teaching. So I decided to just learn using code academy. I figure it’s like learning a language, if I know spanish I know spanish. No need to follow the class if I cant understand the professor.
This is what I use as well.
For human languages I need to a professor. I tried to learn Greek and Hebrew and failed. During Covid I learned Hebrew from a professor and it worked.
For programming languages, I just look online on how to do something.
There is also Pyotr if you want to run python with a JIT written in python.
I would highly recommend finance people looking to code to get familiar with pandas dataframe.
You would never want to use excel ever again.
What the heck is that?