Mostly the title. I have experience with Python, and I was thinking of learning more about data compression. How should I proceed? And what are some good books I could read, both about specifics and abstracts of data compression, data management, data in general.

I am looking for any resource that could tell me how much knowledge and training is needed to go from a beginner to expert, in let's say application software development for example. Or in artificial intelligence.

If there isn't any one source, are there any general type of sources I can use to piece together one mega-source?