[Now Playing: Sleepless Nights – a lo-fi hip hop mix (pt. 4)]
Greetings…
So here we are. About two weeks ago, I came across the following post on Instagram…
This resonates truth to me because there are a few things I have decided to start in life that obviously require constant development to reach certain goals and some of these got an honest start, but fell by the wayside. What happens as a result of this? You look back in frustration knowing how far you could have been by now.
Learning to code in Python is something I first started back in 2015 to strengthen my skill set, for two reasons: 1) I always enjoyed programming (coding) since I took my first college courses in BASIC and FORTRAN IV, back in the day. 3) In 2015, I was unemployed for sometime and thought seriously about a career change. I connected with a developer in a, now defunct, Twitter-like social network call ADN (App Developers Network), around that time, Zeb DeOs. Zeb turned out to be real cool – family man with an intense passion for software development and other things related. He was good enough to engage in some extended email traffic to answer a ton of questions about the many different coding languages, after which I decided that for what I’d like to eventually do, Python would be it.
Anyway, back to this restart. This is my third attempt at learning Python. The first two times were via a structured approach – both times were an MIT MOOC – Introduction to Python for Scientific Computing. Great course and packed with students worldwide with varyng degrees of aptitude BUT with the normal day-to-day ongoings coupled with the fact that i haven’t taken a structured programming course since college, it was kinda tough to hang and get assignments done on time, etc, etc. Directly prior to the first MOOC, I discovered Codecademy, an “online freemium interactive platform that offers free coding classes in 12 different programming languages including Python, Java, JavaScript, Ruby, SQL, and Sass, as well as markup languages HTML and CSS”. I’m back to taking this route, along with using a book called Python Crash Course – A Hands -On, Project-Based Introduction to Programming
This time around I’m not going to let the “pressure” of a structured course driving the learning curve, but, instead I’ve come up with two projects I’d like to code. I won’t say what they are right now, but one has increased complexity over the other Good things these are long term projects that I have something to look forward to After all, the best way to learn coding is to build something.
I’ve got Python 2.7 loaded on my Dell Laptop using Geany as the IDE. On the Macbook, Python 3.7 with the Sublime Text Editor as my IDE (it’s cross platform so I can easily use it with Windows, etc.) I may take a look at freemium course Microsoft has for learning Python, as long as it’s self-paced without the online classroom environment…we’ll see.
That’s it for now…
peace,
Doug
