What is the best way to go about the problems (for total newbies)?
is it watch the lectures, read ALL the stuff... ?
How do you know that it is safe to attempt the solution you have in mind?
Are lectures enough?

Question

What is the best way to go about the problems (for total newbies)?
is it watch the lectures, read ALL the stuff... ?
How do you know that it is safe to attempt  the solution you have in mind?  
Are lectures enough?

anonymous · Answer

Watch each lecture before each problem set. Do all of the reading for that chapter before you start working on the problem set and then dont give up and just keep trying. Post code your working on using pastebin and share it here if you need help or cannot figure out why something is happening. Make sure you always try things in the interpreter to figure them out and understand them first before you try using them in scripts.

anonymous · Answer

Learning is an iterative process. The only way to learn programming is by doing. Work on the problem sets. That's the key. You will make mistakes, not understand, get frustrated, get stuck. But that's how you will learn. Learning anything complex is not linear. "I will watch the lectures. Read the assignments. Do the problems." It doesn't work that way. You might need to watch parts of the video again, google to find out more about some aspect of python, ask questions in this forum. The way to learn is to experiment, to fail, and to fall down, repeatedly. Yeah. But you need to get up and go at it again.

lucifer · Answer

Ok. so, safe to say watching the lectures is not enough like I expected. This course is not going to be easy -- lol.

anonymous · Answer

If it were that easy everyone would do it.