After much searching, I think I have found the best place to start... rosalind.info

It is a site that presents coding challenges that teach the basics of the computational skills required in the bioinformatics field. Optionally there is a track of challenges that go with a textbook...

Bioinformatics Algorithms: An Active-Learning Approach by Phillip Compeau & Pavel Pevzner.

Ordered the book, starting the tracks.

If new to coding, they have a brief intro section to Python on there. I am starting here just to get used to their challenge submission process... most are timed (5 minutes), meaning you need to write the code and test it with their sample data before pulling down the dataset for the challenge.

The book was optional and costs some $$, but the website is free.

This should be an interesting shift from lottery hobby coding!