You invoice clients, track hours, and build deliverables. You're also doing a lot of it by hand — copy-pasting the same invoice template, reformatting exports, running the same monthly summary in Excel. Before we write a single line of code, tell me: which of those tasks eats the most time you'll never bill for?
Honestly, it's the monthly reports. Six clients, six different formats, and I'm rebuilding the same table from scratch every time.
That's exactly the problem Python solves. Before we go further, rate yourself on six skills — not what you hope to learn, but where you actually are today. A 1 on everything is the right answer if you've never opened a Python file.
I'm a designer, not a developer. Is this track even written for me?
You already think in systems — project scope, hourly rates, revision counts. Python is just the plumbing that does the repetitive part without you. Rate honestly. Day 30 answers show the gap.
Thirty days. One real project: a monthly invoice generator. By Day 28 you'll have working Python that takes a list of client dicts — name, rate, hours, description — formats each as an invoice string including subtotals, tax, and payment terms, and returns a list ready to export or PDF.
| Week | Focus | Freelancer framing |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Variables, strings, f-strings, booleans, if/elif | "Every invoice has 5 fields. Stop retyping them." |
| 2 | Lists, loops, dicts, nested structures | "6 clients, 6 reports. One function, one loop." |
| 3 | Functions, defaults, CSV, JSON | "Turn your end-of-month spreadsheet ritual into a script." |
| 4 | Comprehensions, sorting, error handling, capstone | "Ship the invoice generator that clears your admin backlog." |
Every lesson is a short Socratic conversation plus one small coding challenge. Tests tell you immediately what went wrong.
You invoice clients, track hours, and build deliverables. You're also doing a lot of it by hand — copy-pasting the same invoice template, reformatting exports, running the same monthly summary in Excel. Before we write a single line of code, tell me: which of those tasks eats the most time you'll never bill for?
Honestly, it's the monthly reports. Six clients, six different formats, and I'm rebuilding the same table from scratch every time.
That's exactly the problem Python solves. Before we go further, rate yourself on six skills — not what you hope to learn, but where you actually are today. A 1 on everything is the right answer if you've never opened a Python file.
I'm a designer, not a developer. Is this track even written for me?
You already think in systems — project scope, hourly rates, revision counts. Python is just the plumbing that does the repetitive part without you. Rate honestly. Day 30 answers show the gap.
Thirty days. One real project: a monthly invoice generator. By Day 28 you'll have working Python that takes a list of client dicts — name, rate, hours, description — formats each as an invoice string including subtotals, tax, and payment terms, and returns a list ready to export or PDF.
| Week | Focus | Freelancer framing |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Variables, strings, f-strings, booleans, if/elif | "Every invoice has 5 fields. Stop retyping them." |
| 2 | Lists, loops, dicts, nested structures | "6 clients, 6 reports. One function, one loop." |
| 3 | Functions, defaults, CSV, JSON | "Turn your end-of-month spreadsheet ritual into a script." |
| 4 | Comprehensions, sorting, error handling, capstone | "Ship the invoice generator that clears your admin backlog." |
Every lesson is a short Socratic conversation plus one small coding challenge. Tests tell you immediately what went wrong.
