Beginner–trying to learn but I’m a bit overwhelmed /u/LadyLoth44 Python Education

I am in a field (in stem) that doesn’t really have to do with computers or a lot of math in school, yet in the industry these skills are mandatory and expected. (a lot of data, spatial analysis, etc thus being familiar with coding is a huge plus). I would love to learn python on my own to perhaps make my life a little bit easier with some tasks and maybe become a stronger candidate for hire.. Keep in mind I am a total noob when it comes to programming, coding etc save for a little bit of matlab we did in school

I researched a little bit online on forums and on reddit and I am a little confused. I saw several people saying to not bother learning python or any language if you don’t learn programming first? And they mentioned java and c/c++. Are programming and coding different things? (again, sorry, total noob here).

I have this thing where I can’t understand/ stick to things if I don’t know why something works the way it does, if that helps, but I also don’t want to mix up things and go into coding way more than I have to and stray away from my field..but then again, learning things superficially won’t get you very far when you come across a problem that you must fix.. I hope I’m not being too confusing this is a bit overwhelming and hard to explain.. How do people who work in other (not engineer, dev, computer science etc) fields go about learning? How much do you ‘delve’ into it?

Thank you so much for reading this far, sorry for the bad English <3

I am in a field (in stem) that doesn’t really have to do with computers or a lot of math in school, yet in the industry these skills are mandatory and expected. (a lot of data, spatial analysis, etc thus being familiar with coding is a huge plus). I would love to learn python on my own to perhaps make my life a little bit easier with some tasks and maybe become a stronger candidate for hire.. Keep in mind I am a total noob when it comes to programming, coding etc save for a little bit of matlab we did in school

I researched a little bit online on forums and on reddit and I am a little confused. I saw several people saying to not bother learning python or any language if you don’t learn programming first? And they mentioned java and c/c++. Are programming and coding different things? (again, sorry, total noob here).

I have this thing where I can’t understand/ stick to things if I don’t know why something works the way it does, if that helps, but I also don’t want to mix up things and go into coding way more than I have to and stray away from my field..but then again, learning things superficially won’t get you very far when you come across a problem that you must fix.. I hope I’m not being too confusing this is a bit overwhelming and hard to explain.. How do people who work in other (not engineer, dev, computer science etc) fields go about learning? How much do you ‘delve’ into it?

Thank you so much for reading this far, sorry for the bad English <3