Beginning My Journey Into Coding

I began this blog so that I can document my journey into learning how to code. I have used Codecademy and various other sites along my journey thus far, but I haven't been able to really use that information to fully develop anything yet.

I decided that I would devote myself fully to learning Python, since it seems to be a good introductory language to learn. I have a hard copy of "Introduction to Computation and Programming using Python" by John V. Guttag, and I plan to work through this book in order to fully learn how to program in Python.

You are welcome to join me on my journey as I document my way through being a code newbie.

I have completed the first two chapters of this book. Here are the second exercise and my solution thus far:

2.2 Finger Exercise, Pg. 16

Write a program that examines three variables --- x, y and z --- and prints the largest odd number among them. If none of them are odd, it should print a message to that effect.

My Solution:

""" Write a program that examines three variables --- x, y, and z --- and
prints the largest odd number among them. If none of them are odd, it should
print a message to that effect. """

def largest_odd_number(x, y, z):
    print x, y, z
    if x % 2 != 0 and y % 2 != 0 and z % 2 != 0:
        if x > y and x > z:
            print x
        elif y > x and y > z:
            print y
        elif z > x and z > y:
            print z
        elif x == y and y == z:
            print x
    elif x % 2 != 0 and y % 2 != 0 and z % 2 == 0:
        if x > y:
            print x
        else:
            print y
    elif x % 2 == 0 and y % 2 != 0 and z % 2 != 0:
        if y > z:
            print y
        else:
            print z
    elif x % 2 != 0 and y % 2 == 0 and z % 2 != 0:
        if x > z:
            print x
        else:
            print z
    elif x % 2 != 0 and y % 2 == 0 and z % 2 == 0:
        print x
    elif x % 2 == 0 and y % 2 != 0 and z % 2 == 0:
        print y
    elif x % 2 == 0 and y % 2 == 0 and z % 2 != 0:
        print z
    else:
        print "none of these are odd numbers"

Notes:
I know that  my solution to this problem is probably not the most efficient, but it is what I produced as a newbie to programming. It seems to work fine, but it seems kinda long and clunky. Alas, I hope to get better with time. :)
I should say that I downloaded Python 2.7.9, as stated in the book, and I am using the standard IDLE program to write and debug my code. It seems fairly easy to use thus far.
I did use some info that I learned from Codecademy's Python track in this solution, how to create a function. I wanted to use a function in this problem because it seemed more proper. But I really am not sure.
I am gonna write another blog post later to document my solution of the next exercise.