Hopefully, tomorrow is better!

An hour a day.
For a hundred days.

I did 37 days last time.
Here’s to a hundred and lots more learning this time.

Continuing with the Talk Python, #100DaysOfCode in Python.
Will do it at my pace.
And mix and match other little programs and challenges as I come across them.

Wish me luck!

What did I do today?

• I got a rough journal working
• switched to vscode as my programming editor (still using emacs for my other writing.) will move back to emacs when I have the time to sharpen the saw, because I want an editor that I can use 30 years from now. Right now though, I cannot afford to yak shave.

What did I learn?

• Played with the main function and saw how the name variable changes and how I could use that to run my file as a program or a module to some other program
• got a firmer understanding of a while loop
• got the journal to accept an entry into a list and then print the list on demand
• the data is still ephemeral though and the output is ugly
• have to now learn how to make it pretty, and work at saving the data to disk

What did I do today?

• Watched the videos on how to make a mini journal app.

What did I learn?

• Today was a doozy
• I learnt about
  • lists,
  • more conditionals,
  • how to use files for storage & write to a disk independent of what os I’m using,
  • how the main() function kicks things off,
  • and how to use different files for different parts of a program to keep things cleaner and more organised.
• While I began well, I’ve gotten thoroughly confused as the class went on.
• I know these things individually (I think), but the putting it all together, feels like drawing the rest of the fucking owl.

Hope things get clearer tomorrow, as I begin to actually write the program.

What did I do today?

Wrote and ran the birthday app I watched yesterday.
It’s a simple app that asks you for your birthday and then tells you, how many days to or since your birthday.

What did I learn?

• I spent at least 30 minutes hunting down and looking up errors, caused by a tiny typo. I ought to be more careful.
• On the other hand, while I know the basic syntax, my python vocabulary isn’t large enough yet. I still need to see what my 80/20 ratio of fluency to lookup will be. Right now I am looking up everything.
• I am beginning to think of programming as cooking. It’s a really good analogy and it makes programming a lot less intimidating.
• And finally I actually figured what deliberate practice was all about. I worked at a hard enough task that was just out of reach. As opposed to times in the past where stuff was too easy or frighteningly hard. This is a really good space to work in. My head still hurts, but it hurts in a good way 🙂

Onwards …

P.S. Speaking of deliberate practice¹, James Clear has an excellent guide here.

Had an easy day today. The slog yesterday paid off!

What did I do today?

• Finished the Guess the number game app.
• Watched videos for the next one, the Birthday Countdown App.

What did I learn?

• Have to be wary with while loops and where I choose to exit them. Also I should always initialise them with some value that is not in the answer / solution range.
• I can break my code into functional pieces. This piece of code doing one thing and that one doing that. These little mini programs of code are called … functions.
  I felt like Hansa when I realised this.
• When you ask the user for any input, it’ll always come in as a string. You need to convert it, to the format you need.

Onwards …

P.S. Will upload all the code I write here, if you want to see it.

That does not mean that I’m going to give up on the project however.
I am just dropping down and getting fluent with the basics with the Python Jumpstart course.
I aim (very optimistically) to complete an app every 3 days.
This should give me #130DaysOfCode 😂

What did I do today?

• I finished App 1: Hello (you Pythonic) world
• Done with the videos for App 2: Guess that number game.

What did I learn?

• I am a slow learner. It took me two hours to watch and understand (play, get confused, rewind, play … repeat ad nauseam.) I must also be the only one who watches videos at slower than playback speed 😝
• Program flow is not quite like what I imagined.
  A program does not execute top to bottom.
  The python genie must be reading all my statements and figuring out the order somehow.
• Learnt conditionals. If this happens, do this. Otherwise do that.

Will know how much I learn when I actually write the program tomorrow.

In other news

I hit all my September goals. Only because of my health issues they turned into September & October goals 😂

• I do all my basic editing in Emacs
• I type horribly at 30 wpm in Dvorak. (I’m really happy. My arms and fingers and nerves no longer hurt)
• I walk 10,000 steps most days

Ciao for now. More tomorrow!

Could not crack Bite 7.
Did however finally crack Bite 67 after a lot of head scratching.

Have come slowly to the terrifying realisation that I’ve bitten off a whole lot more than I can chew.
Forget thinking Pythonically, I cannot even think programattically.

But then, c’est la vie.

I’ll just put in my hours diligently and let the learning come gradually.

Still.
Did an hour.
Did not die despite tearing my hair out. ¹
Live to code another day

An hour a day. For a hundred days.

Rather than doing something self directed, am following Talk Python’s, #100DaysOfCode in Python.

Today I watched the datetime videos.

That’s Day 1. Done :)

Doing short 20 hour projects seems to work better for me.

To that end, here are my goals for September

• 20h of emacs - goal - get familiar
• 20h of Dvorak - goal - get upto 35wpm
• walk daily - goal - 10000 steps or 90m daily

More as I figure this out.

Daily programming is dead! Long live working towards daily goals!