Work

Upgraded to Nikola v8, b3 today. And now, I realise the amount of stress, virtual environments like conda and pip, alleviate. All I had to do was backup my blog, create a new nikola environment and run it against the blog folder. And while everything went well, I rested easy knowing that I could get everything back to the way it was :) Updates: Last Vim update. Am fairly ok with using it as my daily text editor now. And the anki deck is almost committed to memory. Think my twenty hours are done today :) Done with 15 mins of gtypist. Getting slowly better. Done with watching 5 chapters of the Jumpstart course. Will practice them tomorrow.

It’s taken me 50 days to somehow figure out a way to study. I still feel like Sisyphus. But I realise now, that I have the map. The land isn’t large and unknown as I feared earlier. I just need to keep my head down and take it step by step. Updates: 09.45 – gtypist improves slowly by the day. Getting better, yet stretching 14.15 – vim moves ahead well!

Back to office, still feel funny, so taking it easy. Updates: 15.00 – Done with all the new cards in the Vim Anki Deck. A few more days and I think I’ll drop Vim from the updates. While I’ll never be as fast or productive as other Vim speed demons, that’s not what I’m aiming for anyhoo. I just want to be as fast and error free as I was with DOS edit in the late 90s :P 15:30 – Slower but more accurate with gtypist today. Got half of Chapter 7 in the Lutz book done Watched the video for App 3 in the Jumpstart Python course ...

One way you realise you are making progress is when you realise you’re using the skills you learn elsewhere too. Finished my duolingo session today with my raw “asdf” touch typing skills. I’m slowly internalising touch typing. Stil quite aways to go, though :) Updates: 13.00, Did Vim Anki and used touch typing there too 14.45, 15 mins of gtypist. Loving it now, despite the pain it causes :) 15.00, Beginning Lutz Chapter 4, NUmbers in Action Overloading and Polymorphism, Python itself overloads some opertaors such that they perform different actions depending on the type of buily-in objects being processed. For example, the + operator performs addition when applied to numbers but concatenation when applied to sequence objects like strings and lists. This property is usually called polymorphism 22.00, Chapter 6 of the Lutz book done. It’s a small one called A Dynamic Interlude, but it cleared so many huhs for me. ...

Late start to the day today. Was busy moving a table from mum’s place to mine. This should help my back a lot! Updates: 7p, Getting better with gtypist. 8.15p, Done with Vim 8.20p, No Python Apps tonight 22.33, Just understood the difference between generic sequence operations and methods (my aha for the day!) You can run generic sequence operation across the core object types. For e.g. I can run the len function on strings, or numbers or lists. Methods, are object specific. I can only run numeric methods on numbers and string methods on strings. This probably is why you run generic operations in front of a type, like type(s) and methods as a .whatever like s.isupper. Lutz shows me another quick rule of thumb; when you run the dir function on an object it should list the generic operations with underscores e.g. __len__ and methods just show up as plain attributes later in the listing e.g. swapcase 11.57p, Done with Chapter 4 of the Lutz book. Final big insight for future reference. Polymorphism means that the meaning of an operation (like a +) depends on the objects being operated upon. This turns out to be a key idea (perhaps the key idea) behind using Python well—not censtraining code to specific types makes that code automatically applicable to many types. 

Am really enjoying practicing Vim and Python syntax with my Anki decks. Will start doing 10 mins of touch typing daily. My young friends in the DGPLUG irc channel, all seem to have gained wings with their typing speeds. Given up on the #100daysofcode for now. Current strategy is to … Read theory (Lutz) Practice programs Ask friends to give me more programs. Updates 2p, Restarting the Lutz book. Got lost. 2.15p, Just realised why I love Vim. Vim makes me want to write. 3.20p, Also realised I’d bought myself a beginner Talk Python to Me, course a while back. I could use this for point 2 above. 6.30p, Two baby apps done. 10.45p, Did chapters 1 & 2 of the Lutz Book. 11p, Did 10 minutes of Gtypist. As you can see below, there’s a lo–oong way to go :P