python

Python is a programming language that lets you work quickly and integrate systems more effectively.

That is how python.org puts it. We can maybe add that python comes with a great Open Source community around it, including a large package ecosystem with packages for everything from data science, to bioinformatics or machine learning. We suggest some below, but whenever you need to do something in python (like parsing a particular file format or running some machine learning method), it usually makes sense to go first check whether there is a package that will provide you with all the functionality for this.

learning programming with python

The software carpentries provide a great Programming with Python course that you can also work through self-paced. It includes linkouts for how to set up for the course, so you should be able to get yourself up and learning in no time.

python coding style

python is known for its rigorous style guide, some of which (like indentation) is also rigorously enforced. There's a lot to learn from the style guide, so it's well worth a read!

pandas: the standard for tabular data

pandas is the current de facto standard package for working with tabular data (a.k.a. 95% of all of data science / bioinformatics). Its documentation provides a number of resources for Getting Started, just see which material fits you best (for example, have you used R or Excel in the past...?).

Generally, there are often multiple ways of achieving the same thing with pandas. To be consistent and make your life a bit easier, there's a suggestion for Minimally Sufficient Pandas, a subset of all pandas functionality. It makes sense to familiarize with that subset early on while learning to use pandas.

polars: the future for tabular data

There's also a newer python library for tabular data, called polars. It has a more efficient implementation and a cleaner usage syntax. However, it is not as widely adopted and will not work on some older computers, so the current go-to recommendation is still pandas. And while polars is probably the future for tabular data in python, a transition from pandas to polars won't be too difficult.