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first week down!

summary: console hangman project!

I made my first flowchart, I am so cool and proud hah.

some parts of the project were a bit frustrating because of the way she had it organized pedagogically, but for the same reasons it was a very low stress day for me.

My code diverged from hers several times, but I had to be familiar with her code in order to use the next repl’s starting position. No big deal. The game works but it is brutally hard LOL. Bit of a delay on first load because it calculates dependencies, as I am including an external module (replit) in order to do console clears in the browser.  System console clears also work (import os) which is faster, but doesn’t look as clean .  It flashes in the browser view.

will be 9 tomatoes after cleaning up and also looking a bit at the solidity tutorial again.

day 6 completed.  I will now stop saying that, since that is obviously why I am logging.

summary: review code blocks / indentation, functions, while loops

final project: create instructions for a robot (Reeborg) to solve any a randomly generated maze

Reeborg is a pretty cool learning site. Wish they’d had this when I was in elementary school/junior high. Great to use it now though!

I was able to quickly troubleshoot the intermediate level problem (where edge cases would leave the robot in an infinite loop). I keep coming up with exactly the same solutions are her, so I will take that as a good thing.

7 tomatoes today 🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅

Summary: for loops, ranges, code blocks, “”.join, additional random module methods

Final project is a (console) password generator  

… which I wrote two ways. the first way is more elegant but doesn’t use any for loops which was the topic for the day. the second uses a for loop as well as random int indices to reference the original lists.

In her solution, she already uses random.choice() on the easy version, so if random.choice is on the table, may as well use random.choices() — especially since the “hard” mode already converts to a list and has random.shuffle in play. My rewrite only uses for num in range in order to get the length of the lists, which ironically uses a len() inside.  So I’m happy with mine. I started with a list from the outset, and reviewed using “”.join() once I was satisfied with the list as such.

Will be 6 tomatoes after finishing a couple of other things. I went way over tomatoes yesterday but it wasn’t related to coding, so… not included.

Also did the first 5 lessons of the zombie solidity tutorial for side kicks. cryptozombies.io

Day 4 completed. Not nearly as lengthy for me as yesterday. I felt like I put too much time into a few things yesterday.

summary: reviewed randomness and pseudorandom number generators, modules, lists

final project was a console rock paper scissors game.

Mine works. As I was writing it I specifically commented that I’m assuming no errors or error handling, as if the input was coming from taps of a touchscreen pad.  Little did I know that she would introduce the concept of error handling in the solution for the project. Fine by me, but I did not rewrite.

I also did not rewrite my prototype in her pattern, although I can see where her pattern would be more easily extended to a RPS type game with an additional n hand positions that were all along a spectrum. I just wrote the logic tests explicitly, no big deal. Could I have rewritten it, yes. As a result of how I formatted my code, I did not really need to use the index to choose what image to print, I just printed it by name. However, I conceded that is more elegant and extensible.

6 tomatoes today when all is said and done, including the obligatory log post.

Just completed the day two exercises and final project, a tip calculator.

Today’s work included a review of data types and type conversions, numeric operations, and f-strings, building upon the basic i/o from yesterday. Probably the most important thing that I learned today was how to use a format string inside an f-string {}, rather than executing a string method.

Not being as long-winded today. 🙂 It’s Sunday! 5 Pomodoro’s grown.

🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅

Github here.

It’s after midnight now, about 1:24am, so it counts as Day 1. 10/30/2021

Just took the 10 question placement exam and got a perfect score. The result suggest that I could skip to Day 32, but I am choosing NOT do do that.

Moreover, the additional time exposure working with a given concept works better for my overall mastery, and to be honest I won’t turn down the ego boost of already knowing how to do some of the lessons, as it will give me some more time to look at side studies. #100DaysOfPython doesn’t have to mean Python only. Also I definitely want to run the project days when they discuss Python Turtle and Tkinter!

Next session: repl.it is pretty awesome, they didn’t have stuff like this even a few years ago. (Forgive me, my first experience with Jupyter notebooks was only about 2 months ago, many things blow me away.)

Reviewed string printing and concatenation.

resume session 10:40am : I’m super obsessive about doing every exercise manually, type in by hand, no matter what the course. This has been my doom in many a good course when I couldn’t satisfy my desire to do everything fast enough to maintain interest. I recognize that’s my problem, I also believe that as mentioned prior more exposure and more explicit exposure (e.g., purposeful / intentional exposure with clearly defined goals) is better for my holistic learning process.

I also should not stay up until 4 coding and reading when I have to get up the next day. There are few things that have held my interest over time, conceptually “programming” is one of them. Telling a machine how to do something, enjoying perfect obedience, even with regard to obvious mistakes. This and video games, we’re going on 40 years active now. I must have been 8 when I got that TI. 8 years old copying a dancing “mister bojangles” from some BASIC book. At some point within a year or two I eventually convinced my parents to get me a tape recorder to store programs and data. Primitive but functional. I remember thinking I was going to write a secret note taking program, with a password and such. Now I realize I have very little about which to write secret notes.

Resume session afternoon: finished the day final exercise, a silly band name generator that demonstrates the most basic console i/o sequence as well as fundamental string processing. https://replit.com/@demondegreen/band-name-generator#

Left some feedback with regard to a couple of broken issues on some of the teaching material (tech changes, links change, etc). Also started using a pomodoro timer today to try to focus better. 3 tomatoes on a Saturday is not bad, and that didn’t account any of the work i did before, it would have been easily 5-6.

Looking forward to tomorrow, I’m happy with the pace for day 1. The guided project arc and intro to all the different libraries is what I need the most. Structure. The review of the python syntax is just icing on the cake, because of course it feels good to already know how to do something. It gave me time to mess around and check out using the Thonny debugger (cool) without feeling distracted.

Github here.

Decided to do #100DaysOfCode #100DaysOfPython, so prepped a few things. Made a new Twitter for the purpose. I will be going through 100 Days of Code – The Complete Python Pro Bootcamp for 2021 with Dr. Angela Yu (@yu_angela on Twitter) via udemy.

I am not a new programmer, by a long shot. I have been self-taught programming since I was about 8 years old, started with copying BASIC out of magazines onto a TI-994a. In my life, I have been paid to code/script in pretty much everything, ironically including Python, but it has been a while.

So I am starting from scratch at day 0. I need to get back into the world, and I need to build some current if not simple portfolio examples. I am hereby rebooting myself, which is frankly a bigger deal than the 100 Day commitment. I may be out of town every once in a while, I’m only going to be reasonably tough on myself about that. The end goal is to have 100 days of reported project-oriented learning linked from this log and annotated via Twitter @de_mondegreen.

I have noticed several people reporting starting study on Day 0. I am always learning, so I could report something for today as well, but I will start the official reports and the official “counting” work / study, tomorrow.

I am not concerned about whether this is “working on real problems” or not, as for counting toward this challenge… The real problem that I’m working on is the slow but certain unwinding of my focus and initiative over the passing years. The real success will be to complete one round of 100 days, even if it takes more than 100 days, at the end of which having something to show for the effort (github repo, working apps and web projects, relevant Twitter posts, blog posts).