Hello @TerraVia, welcome!
If you have time for a long message, please check this out.
When I worked on my first software project for work, I had only known for-loop, while-loop, if-elif-else statements and doing plus/minus/multiply/divide. It was a project to control hardware, and to acquire and analyze some data from the hardware. With that goal in mind, and without any teacher, I googled a lot, tried a lot and made a lot of mistakes as well. My way was a way of motivations and I see it as a proper way. I hope you will find your own proper way too.
Cheers,
Raymond