Something like a break

well i went on vacation for a couple of weeks, got sick when i got back, and then started some work that made me exhausted and ive fallen off a bit but also watched some inspiring youtube videos and have listened to 1.25 podcasts. 

so i've printed out the developer roadmap, upon recommendation of someone at the code mentorship meetup, and the printout is on my wall.  hopefully if i see it every day i will start to think about things i can do to help move this along.

Reddit Post about self-taught CS

https://teachyourselfcs.com/

This website looks pretty useful!

Also a few youtube series:

Crash Course CS
CS50
ComputerPhile
Tom Scott's the basics
https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-science

 Read Code by Charles Petzold. It's a CS degree wrapped in language people can actually understand.

 https://www.youtube.com/user/mycodeschool

Coding Bat

OK, cool.  Some more stuff to look at when I get the moxy.

A brief update

I went to a meetup call Austin Coding Mentorship.

People there were really helpful!

I saw people offering to help people get jobs, there were lots of encouraging words, and people seemed to be learning.

I was impressed and will go again.


I also went to free code camp this week, and did some coding practice there, although it never feels like quite enough.

I'm trying to keep up with javascript by using an app on my phone.  Studying on my phone means I can use my bus time efficiently.

Also, I read a guide to bootcamps.  I've been interested in going to one, and this guide came up in my freecodecamp email.  It was full of good information, but the summary at the end was good.

Three important things:

1. Your skills
2. Your reputation
3. Your network

I need to make a plan to work on these three things.

Joined the Free Code Camp Forum

Like the title says, I joined the Free Code Camp forum today.

I did some interaction with the discobot.  We sent messages back and forth, and the messages usually involved a task that I needed to complete, which led to another message.  I think there were about 15 messages total.  It was relatively engaging.  More doing than reading.

I think this kind of thing would be wonderful for language learning.  Sort of like a MUD, but smaller and maybe a bit more discrete, so that it would be forgiving of bad grammar or misspellings, etc.

Stumbling Around

https://learn.freecodecamp.org/javascript-algorithms-and-data-structures/es6/use-destructuring-assignment-to-assign-variables-from-objects

I really had trouble with this one.  I basically had to join the forum and find the code.

I don't understand how destructuring something that doesn't exist is possible.  Maybe that isn't what is happening.

Hopefully this can be one of those posts that I look back on in awhile and realize how far I've come.

My two month break

I took something like a two month break from learning to code.  I was making money doing other things, and those things left me pretty tired.  They were distractions from coding, and honestly I think coding doesn't have my full attention.  I'm going to try to slam it in by hitting on more cylinders.  I'll be doing more than freecodecamp.. I'll work a bit more with Odin, and I've also found a few other resources.  Sololearn for my phone, that will help when all I can do is lay down, but I'll still be able to study. 

I'm thinking of setting a daily timer for my coding adventures.  This will be something like what I do with language learning.  Maybe keeping a written diary will help, too.  Something about this format is hindering me from keeping things collated, which is the whole point of this blog.  Sometimes I also feel like I can't really brainstorm when I write something that I'm going to post on the internet.  It feels incorrect, perhaps unprofessional, perhaps inappropriate.

But also it isn't all that coding is negative.  There are a lot of interesting things going on in my life that I have enjoyed doing, and they are worthy of my time.  I just need to get into a new chapter, and I hope coding can get me there.

Transpilers

https://scotch.io/tutorials/javascript-transpilers-what-they-are-why-we-need-them

lots of things you'd need to know about transpilers.  they change one language into another, say js 5 to js 6.  or something.  i don't know, read that article

MDN Accessibility Hack

some things I learned about:

codepen
screen readers

but hey mostly during this thing i was useless.  i thought it was open to anyone of any skill level.  it turns out most people had very specific disabilities they were focused on and knowledgeable about, but also lots of developer experience.

i mostly broke things and bothered people while they were doing things

i did eat lots of cookies

Quora: How can I become a really good web developer?

https://www.quora.com/Computer-Programming/How-can-I-become-a-really-good-web-developer-starting-from-now-at-age-20-before-age-25
I guess these are better than the other quora post I just made. 

A lot of it seems to boil down to: commit and immerse yourself.

Quora: What makes a an excellent web developer?

https://www.quora.com/What-makes-an-excellent-web-developer-What-qualities-do-people-look-for-in-their-staff-consultants-and-freelance-contractors-when-they-hire-a-web-developer-to-build-a-Web-site

a lot of these tips sound megalomaniacal to me

also egotistical, uninformed, and possible racist

but i guess i need to use them?

hacker mind set, be a great person, be a great communicator, commit all my time

ok yeah i want a job not a life style

Deliberate Practice

https://codequizzes.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/deliberate-programming-practice/

this is more of the 10,000 hours thing.  i think people can start solving important problems right away, and some people are better equipped to solve big problems the less they are saturated by common methods and systems.  learning is jagged, individual, and might go backwards.

Blog: How to get a programmer job

 this came at me via the scion project.  it was thought provoking.  this guy is clearly ahead of me in terms of technical skill.  i think i picked up a lot of things, so i'm grateful he took the time to write this out so clearly.

https://www.happybearsoftware.com/how-to-get-a-programmer-job

An interesting quote:

Only make a decision when you have at least three offers in hand.

what is finite state automata?

this sounds good to me:

Building things will reliably add to your skill points in each of the other attributes above.

 sometimes this blog feels like a scrapbook, but here I am:

 Am I going to be productive with this company? Will they have some sort of iterative development process or is it the same chaos that most companies that happen to need programmers find themselves in?

So far this article has helped me get a few priorities right. I don't want to work with social media, i.e. twitter or facebook.  I'd like to limit my choices to a specific geographic area, so that I don't have to buy a car.

 Do a quick exercise: in your notebook write a list of the questions you think interviewers might ask you. What would you ask if you were hiring you and were given your CV?

The Odin Project

https://www.theodinproject.com

Today I found out about the Odin Project.  It looks like freecodecamp.org but a bit different in that it seems to offer different frameworks, and just judging by the drastic differences in course lengths, they seem to present the material differently.

So, I will dig into this later and post an update.

Posts on Free code camp

https://wordselideintomyeyes.blogspot.com/2019/05/blog-psychology-of-pair-programming.html
this one's about pair programming.  there are some good tips

https://wordselideintomyeyes.blogspot.com/2019/05/blog-how-to-make-peace-with-deadlines.html

this one is about how bad people are at predicting how long things will take.  breaking it up into smaller pieces is a good tip, but there are others here.

Unix workbench 3

Unix workbench 1
Unix workbench 2

I've kind of fallen off the wagon a bit with this course.

Today I'm learing how to make text files with the head command.  I still don't know how to do this really.  I imagine I will have to look things up all the time whenever I use bash.

I did relearn how to :w and :q when things get sticky.

cp copies files and there are also diff and sdiff to help you compare things.

md5 and shashum can be used to do checksums and whatnot, both creating and checking.

the pipe expression seems very useful.  you can take the output of one expression and pipe it to another:

A more common and useful example where we could use the pipe is answering the question: “How many US states end in a vowel?” We could use grep and regular expressions to list all of the state names that end with a vowel, then we could use wc to count all of the matching state names

github: I made an account

https://wordselideintomyeyes.blogspot.com/2019/05/github-tutorial.html

I made an account and followed a tutorial.  Today begins my github journey.  ok

YT: Tech lead hates dell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnwB8Oh628Q

looks like his macbook is a better choice

CS Dojo explains how to begin coding

https://moobieroob.blogspot.com/2019/05/yt-cs-dojo-coding-resources.html

he has a big list of resources, i made a somewhat abridged list in the link above

Video about AWS solutions architect exam

https://moobieroob.blogspot.com/2019/05/yt-aws-solutions-architect-exam.html

this guy breaks down the test.  Seems like the materials at acloudguru are pretty good for the associate level but not as good for pro.

this is a follow up to my post about the guy who got three aws certificates.

Reading about aws certificate exams

https://wordselideintomyeyes.blogspot.com/2019/05/blog-preparing-for-aws-associate-exam.html

I read a blog about preparing for the exam and here is a little write up.  i still can't figure out if this certificate is really worth it, though.  I need to find out more about aws.

Pytorch

https://moobieroob.blogspot.com/2019/05/yt-what-is-pytorch.html
I watched a video about Pytorch and learned a lot.  But the info was a bit too much.  I've seen a lot of these tech videos define one thing by comparing it to another, usually a predecessor.  Well, I don't usually know the predecessor so I find it difficult to understand the comparisons they are making.  Usually I end up being bombarded by jargon and stuff.

Anyway, pyTorch is for marchine learning and uses imperative programming.

Data Structures and Algos

https://moobieroob.blogspot.com/2019/05/yt-cs-dojo-algorithms-and-data.html

I watched some videos to learn about data structures and algoritties

I still haven't seen a cool application for these, like how do I make things fun?  But they are interesting enough on their own that I want to keep studying.  I can see they have powerful uses.

Anyway, that was all from CS Dojo.  Part of the free CS degree involves algoritties and data structures, too, and that was my original inspiration for looking these things up. 

Jenkins

I learned a bit about Jenkins today. 

I read and a watched.

The most information came from reading.

Unix Workbench 2

There’s a mnemonic that I love for remembering which metacharacter to use for each anchor: “First you get the power, then you get the money.” The caret character is used for exponentiation in many programming languages, so “power” (^) is used for the beginning of a line and “money” ($) is used for the end of a line.

https://regexr.com/ you can use this site to test regular expressions.

I remember seeing so much bash script on IRC back in the past.  Now I finally understand some of it.  I don't know how I never thought to look it up?  I always thought it was TCL, and that TCL is something I would never need.  Now I see how my old dream of a text based UI was right in front of me but I never saw it.

coursera: Unix Workbench

• You type command line commands after the prompt.
• clear will clean up your terminal.
• echo prints text to your terminal.
• You can scroll through your command history with the Up and Down arrow keys.

I hope to look back at this post in the future and see how much I have learned.
 You can identify a specific file or folder by its path.

• The root directory (/) contains all of the folders and files on your computer.
• Your home directory (~) is the directory where your terminal always starts.
• Use the cd command to change your working directory.
• The pwd command will print the working directory.
• The ls command will list files and folders in a directory.

 There’s no undo button in Unix so I’ll have to live with this mistake. --wow

• Use mkdir to create new directories.
• The touch command creates empty files.
• You can use > to redirect the output of a command into a file.
• >> will append command output to the end of a file.
• Print a text file to the command line using cat.
• Inspect properties of a text file with wc.
• Peek at the beginning and end of a text file with head and tail.
• Scroll through a large text file with less.
• nano is simple text editor.

 Another hidden use of the mv command is that you can use it to rename files and folders. The first argument is the path to the folder or file that you want to rename, and the second argument is a path with the new name for the file or folder.

• mv can be used for moving or renaming files or folders.
• cp can copy files or folders.
• You should try to avoid using rm which permanently removes files or folders.

YouTube: What is an array? The Coding Train

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NptnmWvkbTw

an array is a list of data. thanks for finally clearing that up

Post on Reddit about AWS certifications

https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/bhfi88/how_i_went_from_14hr_to_70k_with_no_experience/

there's some fun stuff on here about aws certs and how to get them.  it took this guy 87 days to get three of them.  he started a youtube channel and displayed a few projects.  i guess he's got a lot of gumption.  anyway he mentioned that he got a job offer in austin for 72k.  that sounds good to me.  i don't know if i want to do software engineering or just IT.  but i do want to make money and get some benefits. 

overall i feel like i'm only just creeping along with this free CS degree and i dont know if i am motivated enough to get to studying.  ive been in school so much of my life.  i find it tiring.  i just want to hang out with my friends and play guitar.  but yeah, i try to think about the good times ahead, and to think about the things that will change once i have successfully switched careers.  i try to stay optimistic but still i dont think i can study enough.  this is the beginning of imposter syndrome? i hope not.

so yeah, this reddit post made me take a second look at what i'm doing with this project.  i need to think about it more to really see where i am going.

Hack on MDN web docs

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hack-day-for-mdn-web-docs-at-accessu-2019-tickets-60595907992

This is a daylong event to improve documentation for accessibility and mozilla or something.

I'm not sure why this costs 27 dollars.  i'm still interested.  helping improve access is a priority of mine.  also, it will probably be good for networking.

intro to CS lesson 5

i've decided to speed through this class, i.e. skip to the answers for quizzes. the teacher is clearly an expert in his field but he seems to conflate concepts with syntax.  no, i don't know how to print something because that is done with 'return', but i understand the steps of logic i need to get the output i want.

anyway, a few things that he has mentioned recently that i think i will remember

== is used for equals because = is used to set values

dont use variable names like a,b,c because they dont describe what the variable is/does.  in bigger code settings where you cant keep everything in short term memory, the names will help you understand what is actually happening.


these four things can be used to do anything in computer science.  thanks mr turing:
arithmetic
comparisons
procedures
if

finishing the linux command line introcourse

i finished this course finally.  it was quick overall.  i learned a lot, but i took breaks between classes.  by the end of the course i my shell terminal had stopped working and i couldnt remember how to start it up again.  i guess i need to review.  the quizzes were good, but it was hard to practice without a working shell terminal.  oh well.  the most important thing I learned was to read the manual for different commands, and to use google search. i might take some of their other linux courses, too.

going to start the udacity class on linux

the ucsd intro to cs course is a bit boring.  i feel like the material isnt granular enough, it jumps ahead to things it hasnt taught me, and i dont even know if what i'm learning is what they are teaching.  i realized i havent studied in that course for a few days, so i'm going to try something different.  i'm going to try the unix class listed on free cs degree:

https://github.com/ForrestKnight/open-source-cs

genetic algorithms in computer science

https://medium.freecodecamp.org/the-computer-science-of-evolution-an-introduction-to-genetic-algorithms-b3871286c7e7

this is just an introductory article but it explains how genes and selection can be used as part of a process to find a solution to a problem.  it doesnt introduce any problems or solutions, but there is a second part, which i plan to read later.

pure css simpsons characters

https://www.cssdesignawards.com/blog/pure-css-critters-and-cartoon-characters/102/

these faces are fun.  kinda crazy to make things like this with css, it does not seem to be designed for this

leetcode and firecode.io

i guess these are coding challenge websites

looks like something i need to look into

W3 Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

I would like to learn more about this.

React.js Tips

https://medium.freecodecamp.org/what-i-wish-i-knew-when-i-started-to-work-with-react-js-3ba36107fd13

All of this was over my head.  I look forward to reading this in a few months and having a better idea of what this is talking about.

FreeCodeCamp

I'm also doing free code camp.  I just finished basic html, and basic CSS.  Looks like things have really improved since I dropped off of coding, with suggested tags and color coding elements a big help.  The lessons are all bite size and I'm zooming through it.  It will be interesting to see what it is like when I'm doing something that is not review.

Into to computer science

I'm having a lot of problems with syntax. Paranthesis or brackets, commas or colons.  I think I do get most of the concepts, but the syntax is a struggle.

I watched some coding videos

https://youtu.be/6t3ue7dX5WI
guy talks about his salary. it looks like it goes up and up

https://youtu.be/ZrnoQ122pzs
guy weighs in on which language is important to start with, basically says python

https://youtu.be/62tsiY5j4_0
dude talks about getting into software development.  used to be a cars salesman.  says he started with java


https://youtu.be/A4dXZkjWTg0
good reasons not to be a software engineer

https://youtu.be/XoSllabxqiQ
his whole computer science degree in 12 minutes

https://youtu.be/ReVeUvwTGdU
this guy explains his whole three years of learning computer science

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV8DldSzZvQ
get instant feedback.  fail fast. try to understand what's wrong.  "not trying things out" is the biggest mistake

https://youtu.be/ZWQ0591PAxM
this was about making an nes game.  the memory available is super small, just 40kb.  so the devs had to find ways to optimize things.  the tips they shared are quite interesting



i usually watch these in fast forward because there's a lot of "entertaining" editing.  i was looking for similarities, like books or advice.  mostly they just say code every day, the books all seem to be different

concatendation

that's when you use + on a string

Non-terminal

these are things you arent finished with.

this is part of Backus-Naur form

these work something like grammar

Why not use English, Mandarin, or other natural languages

Ambiguity - the example is "biweekly" which means twice a week, or once every twice every two weeks. But this happens at the sentence level

Verbosity - natural languages would use too many words

Thanks Forrest Knight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyOvFSP_IpQ

I found this video describing a free online computer science degree.  I'm going to give it a shot, and I'm going to try to keep track of what I have accomplished by writing this blog.

his outline is here:

https://github.com/ForrestKnight/open-source-cs