Approach programming with the same seriousness that you’d expect a programmer to approach your field with. You say yourself you just want it to “do the thing, conventions be damned”.

Well how would you feel if someone entered your lab or whatever and treated the tools of your trade that way?

Read your own code that you wrote a month ago. For every wtf moment, try to rewrite it in a clearer way. With time you will internalize what is or is not a good idea. Usually this means naming your constants, moving code inside function to have a friendly name that explain what this code does, or moving code out of a function because the abstraction you choose was not a good one. Since you have 10 years of experience it’s highly possible that you already do that, so just continue :)

If you are motivated I would advice to take a look to Rust. The goal is not really to be able to use it (even if it’s nice to be able able to write fast code to speed up your python), but the Rust compiler is like a very exigeant teacher that will not forgive any mistakes while explaining why it’s not a good idea to do that and what you should do instead. The quality of the errors are crutial, this is what will help you to undertand and improve over time. So consider Rust as an exercice to become a better python programmer. So whatever you try to do in Rust, try to understand how it applies to python. There are many tutorials online. The official book is a good start. And in general learning new languages with a very different paradigm is the best way to improve since it will help you to see stuff from a new angle.

Most of the “conventions” (which are normally just “good practices”) are there to make the software easier to maintain, to make teamwork more efficient, to manage complexity in large code-bases, to reduce the chance of mistakes and to give a little boost in productivity.

For example, using descriptive names for variables (i.e. “sampleDataPoints” rather than “x”) reduces the chances of mistakes due to confusing variables (especially in long stretches of code) and allows others (and yourself if you don’t look at that code for many months) to pick up much faster what’s going on there in order to change it. Dividing your code into functions, on the other hand, promotes reusability of the same code in many places without the downsides of copy & paste of the same code all over the place, such as growing the code base (which makes it costlier to maintain) and, worse, unwittingly copying and pasting bugs so now you have to fix the same stuff in several places (and might even forget one or two) rather than just fixing it in that one function.

Stuff at a higher, software design level, such as classes, are mean to help structure the code into self-contained blocks with clear well controlled ways of interaction between them, thus reducing overall complexity (everything potentially connecting to everything else is the most complex web of connection you could have) increasing productivity (less stuff to consider at any one point whilst doing some code, as it can’t access everything), reduce bugs (less possibility of mistakes when certain things can only be changed by only a certain part of the code) and make it easier for others to use your stuff (they don’t need to know how your classes works, only to to talk to them, like a mini library). That said, it’s perfectly feasible to achieve a similar result as classes without using classes and using scope only, though more advance features of classes such as inheritance won’t be possible to easilly emulate like that.

That said, if your programs are small, pretty much one use (i.e. you don’t have to keep on using them for years) and you’re not having to work on the code as a team, you can get away with not using most “conventions” (certainly the design level stuff) with only the downside of some loss in productivity (you lose code clarity and simplification, which increases the likelihood of bugs and makes it slower to transverse and spot stuff in the code when you have to go back and forth to change things).

I’ve worked with people who weren’t programmers but did code (namelly with Quants in Finance) and they’re simply not very good at doing what is but a secondary job for them (Quants mainly do Mathematical modelling) which is absolutelly normal because unlike with actual Developers, doing code well and efficiently is not what their focus has been in for years.

The O’Reilly “In a Nutshell” and “Pocket Guide to” books are great for folks who can already code, and want to pick up a related tool or a new language.

The Pocket Guide to Git is an obvious choice in your situation, if you don’t already have it.

As others have mentioned, you’re allowed to ignore the team stuff. In git this means you have my permission to commit directly to the ‘main’ branch, particularly while you’re learning.

Lessons that I’ve learned the hard way, that apply for someone scripting alone:

• git will save your ass. Get in the habit of using if for everything ASAP, and it’ll be there when you need it
• find that one friend who waxes poetic about git, and keep them close. Usually listening politely to them wax poetically about git will do the trick. Five minutes of their time can be a real life saver later. As that friend, I know when you’re using me for my git-fu, and I don’t mind. It’s hard for me to make friends, perhaps because I constantly wax poetically about git.
• every code swan starts as an ugly duck that got the job done.
• print(f"debug: {what_the_fuck_is_this}") is a valid pattern that seasoned professionals still turn to. If you’re in a code environment that doesn’t support it, then it’s a bad code environment.
• one peer who reads your code regularly will make you a minimum of 5x more effective. It’s awkward as hell to get started, but incredibly worth it. Obviously, you traditionally should return the favor, even though you won’t feel qualified. They don’t really feel qualified either, so it works out. (Soure: I advise real scientists about their code all the time. It’s still wild to me that they, as actual scientists, listen to me - even after I see how much benefit I provide.)

As one physicist to another, the most important thing in the code are long variable names (descriptive) and comments.

We usually do not do multi-people multi year projects, so all other comments in this page especially the ones coming from programmers are not that relevant. Classes are cool, but they are not needed and often obscure clarity of algorithmic/functional programming.

S. Wolfram (creator of Mathematica) said something along these lines (paraphrasing) if you are writing real code in Mathematica - you are doing something wrong.

Forget everything you hear about OOP and just view it as a way to improve code readability. Just rewrite something convoluted with a class and you’ll se what they’re good for. Once you’ve got over the mental blockade, it’ll all make more sense.

Learn Haskell.

Since it is a research language, it is packed with academically-rigorous implementations of advanced features (currying, lambda expressions, pattern matching, list comprehension, type classes/type polymorphism, monads, laziness, strong typing, algebraic data types, parser combinators that allow you to implement a DSL in 20 lines, making illegal states unrepresentable, etc) that eventually make their way into other languages. It will force you to learn some of the more advanced concepts in programming while also giving you a new perspective that will improve your code in any language you might use.

I was big into embedded C programming years back … and when I got to the pointers part, I couldn’t figure out why I suddenly felt unsatisfied and that I was somehow doing something wrong. That instinct ended up being at least partially correct. I sensed that I was doing something unsafe (which forced me to be very careful around footguns like pointers, dedicating extra mental processes to keep track of those inherently unsafe solutions) and I wished there was some more elegant way around unsafe actions like that (or at least some language provided way of making sure those unintended side effects could be enforced by the compiler, which would prevent these kinds of bugs from getting into my code).

Years later, after not enjoying JS, TS (IMO, a porous condom over the tip of JavaScript), Swift, Python, and others, my journey brought me to FRP which eventually brought me to FP and with it, Haskell, Purescript, Rust, and Nix. I now regularly feel the same satisfaction using those languages that I felt when solving a math problem correctly. Refactoring is a pleasure with strictly typed languages like that because the compiler catches almost everything before it will even let you compile.

While there are lots of programming courses out there, not many of them will explicitly teach you about good programming principles. Here are a couple things off the top of my head:

• High cohesion, low coupling. That is, when you divide up code into functions and classes, try to minimize the number of things going between those functions (if your functions regularly have 6+ arguments, that’s a red flag and should be reviewed). And when something needs to be broken up into pieces, try to find the spots where there are minimal points of contact.

• Try to divide code between functions and files in a way that doesn’t feel too busy. If there are a bunch of related functions that are cluttering up one file, or that are referenced from multiple places, consider making a module for those. If you’re not sure what “too busy” means…

• Read a style guide. There are lots of things that will help you clean up and organize your code. The guide won’t necessarily tell you why to do each thing, but it’s a great tool when you don’t have another point of reference.

If you have a chance to take a “Software Engineering 101” class, this is where you’d learn most of the basic principles for writing better code.

Do you want to work as a developer? Or do you want to want to continue with your research and analysis? If you’re only writing code for your own purposes, I don’t know why it matters if it’s conventional.

The thing to think about is reusability. Are you copying and pasting code into multiple places? That’s a great candidate to become a class. If you have long lived projects (i.e. something you will use multiple times over a lot of years) maintainability is important. Huge functions and monolithic applications are very hard to maintain over time.

Break your functionality out into small chunks (methods and classes). Keep it simple. It may take a while to get used to this, but your time for adding additional functionality will be greatly improved in the long run.

A lot of great programmers were terrible at one time. Don’t let your current lack of knowledge of principles stop you from learning. One of the biggest breakthroughs I had as a programmer is changing how I looked at architecting applications. Following SOLID principles will assist a lot in that. Don’t try to understand and use these principles all at once, take your time. Programming isn’t what you make your living with, it’s a tool to help you be more efficient in your current role.

Realize that becoming a more effective programmer is different for everyone. Like you, I was self taught. I was a systems and network engineer that decided to move into software development. I’ve since moved into a role that takes advantage of all the skills I’ve learned through the years in SRE. like you, a lot of what I write now is about automation and analysis.

Could be good to try to ‘reset’ your brain, by learning an entirely new programming language. Ideally, a statically typed, strict language like Rust or Java, or Scala, if you happen to have a use for it in data processing. They’ll partially force you to do it the proper way, which can be eye-opening and will translate backwards to Python et al.
Just in general, getting presented the condensate of a different approach to programming, by learning a new language, can teach a lot about programming, even if you’re never going back to that language.

For learning more about Git, I can recommend Oh My Git!. It takes a few hours to get through. In my experience, it’s really useful to have at least seen all the tools Git provides, because if something goes sideways, you can remedy it with that.

Think two things:

1. optimize the control flow of your code

2. make it easy to read

You should also be disciplined with these two ideas, your code will look better as you become more experienced, 100% guaranteed.

There’s a certain amount of fundamentals you need, after that point it’s quite easy to hop languages by just looking over the documentation of that language. If you skip those fundamentals, you end up with a bunch of knowledge but don’t realize you could do things way more effectively.

My recommendation: check out free resources for beginners and skip the atuff you already know thoroughly, focusing only on the stuff you don’t know.

source: I’m self-taught and had to go through this process myself.

All the other comments are great advice. As an ex chemist who does quite a bit of code I’ll add:

Do you want code that works, or code that works?! It’s reasonably easy to knock out ugly code that only works once, and that can be just what you need. It takes a little more effort however to make it robust. Think about how it can fail and trap the failures. If you’re sharing code with others, this is even more important a people do ‘interesting’ things.

There’s a lot of temporary code that’s had a very long life in production, this has technical debt… Is it documented? Is it stable? Is it secure? Ideally it should be

Code examples on the first page of Google tend to work ok, but are not generally secure, e.g doing SQL queries instead of using prepared statements. Doesn’t take much extra effort to do it properly and gives you peace of mind. We create sboms for our code now so we can easily check if a component has gained a vulnerability. Doesn’t mean our code is good, but it helps. You don’t really want to be the person who’s code helped let an attacker in.

Any code you write, especially stuff you share will give you a support and maintenance task long term. Pirate for it!

Code sometimes just stops working. - at least I’m my experience. Sacrifice something to the gods and all will be fine.

Finally, you probably know more than you think. You’ve plenty of experience. Most of the time I can do what I need without e.g. classes, but sometimes I’ll intentionally use a technique in a project just to learn it. I can’t learn stuff if I don’t have a use for it.

I’m still learning, so if I’ve got any part of the above wrong, please help me out.

This is only tangentially related to improving your code directly as you have asked. However, in a similar vein as using source control (git), when using Python learn to manage your environments. Venv, poetry, conda/mamba, etc are tools to look into.

I used to work with mostly scientists, and a good number of them knew some Python, but none of them knew how to properly manage their environments and it was a huge problem. They would often come to me and say “I ran this script a week ago and it worked, I tried it today without making any changes and it’s throwing this error now that I don’t understand.” Every time it was because they accidentally changed their dependencies, using their global python install. It also made it a nightmare to try to revive old code for them, since there was almost no way to know what version of various libraries were used.