One of the skills I feel like I've been missing in my life is programming. The only excuse I've had for not learning how to do it is laziness and the fact that it takes time. I'm the kind of guy who ends up dropping things because it takes me more than three hours to master it.
I recently got a bit of a kick in the ass though. Next year the school where I work will be offering programming as a subject that students can choose to take. I was asked to teach this course because I'm the most qualified teacher to do it due to having used some block-programming alongside Micro:Bit in some of my classes.
The curriculum says that the students shall work with several programming languages where at least one is text based. Therefore I've started to learn Python seeing as it seems to be a decent entry point into programming. If I end up teaching this subject over several years I'll probably expanding my repertoire as I go.
There's just about a million ways to learn Python apparently so I decided to go with something called Sololearn. What I liked about this is that it's an app on my phone where I can take on short 5 minute lessons when it pleases me. Perfect for the commute to and from work for instance.
If it's the best way to learn coding or not I'm not sure but for now it's working well. I started their Python for Beginners which has 36 lessons to get me started. So for I've gone through about 20 on them and I'm having fun while doing so. Already being relatively good at math really helps which means I can focus less on the math part of programming and more on the actual syntax.
So far I've pretty much just learned the stuff you see above. How to print text, take inputs, variables, using if/else statements. I already knew how variables and if/else statements works from using Micro:Bit so again this was more about learning the syntax of Python for me.
I'll be moving into loops in my next few lessons which is another thing I've used with Micro:Bit although I expect this to be a wee bit different. So far there hasn't been much of a challenge but I expect that to ramp up as I go. The few times I've answered a task wrong was mostly due to misclicks. If this was brand new mumbo jumbo to me I would probably have lost more lives and had to spend money on Sololearn which I don't really want to do.
I do like Sololearn pretty well though I have to say. The way they're teaching is easy to follow and easy to do. It's heavily based on learning by doing which is definitely what works best for me. The lessons deliver a good mix og multiple choice questions, "finish this code" exercises, predicting what codes to as well as making full codes yourself.
Their subscription as $50/year isn't that bad and you only really need it if you're in a big rush to learn seeing as every mistak you do costs a life which you have three of until they recharge. A subscription gives you infinite lives. There's also some other perks that I don't find necessary personally.
If anyone has any good tips on courses I can take after this beginners course I would love to hear it. My plan was to jump on Sololearns Python Core course after this one but if someone has a better suggestions then drop me a comment!
All images in this post are screenshots taken by me.
I remember using SoloLearn a bit early on, but I found that for me at least, I retained a lot more of the concepts when I switched to watching courses on Udemy and making shit with the instructors as I watched. SoloLearn if I recall correctly has a lot of 'drag the right answer to the box' stuff and for my brain at least, it did not lead to retention.
For me to learn, I need to use it. I need to write the whole thing out. Maybe they got better about this in the years since I've used it, but if not and if you're finding concepts are hard to retain, try Udemy. They usually have sales on courses pop up regularly and you can get some for like 12$ (others for free).
I was looking into Udemy first but I never learn well from videos. I always fall off and kinda hate pausing and rewinding all the time. I prefer reading where I can stop wherever I want then just glance back at the last sentence instead of having to rewind to the right moment. Also this form is great for bite sized learning on the daily commute or during a 5 minute break. I'll probably have to resort to something else than SoloLearn when I get into the more advanced stuff though. Thanks for the tip!
For reading, I highly recommend Automate The Boring Stuff: https://automatetheboringstuff.com/. It's super good, though I still have to finish it. My python got sidetracked a while back and I never picked it back up.
I remember when I was learning about c++ code when I went to college and I frigging loved it. I loved solving problems with it and wondering why things were not working they way they were meant too. One of these days I'm going to be going back to get a degree in something programming related as now.
I might even look into SoloLearn after the summer season!
Little funny side story: One of the guys I went to college with was awesome at animation and when we got a new instructor for the 3rd time, he actually asked this student if he would be interested in making animated porn. This instructor only lasted 2 weeks, lied on his resume, and sexually harrassed the Massage students next door.
lmao not sure if we should call that guy a legend or a turd. I hope to expand my repertoire as time goes by. SoloLearn seems to have courses for most of the well known programming languages. But that's a long term goal anyways. My favorite parts of the course is the coding projects they have you do at the end of each lesson. They give you a task to build a kind of program based on the things you've learned so far. It always incorporates something from the current lesson and some stuff from older lessons. That's where I learn the most.
I will definitely be giving it a look at then! It will give me something else to do over the winter!
OMG. It seems nature is bent on me learning python.
I recently got a huge push to start learning to code as well. Actually, I wanted to go into data analysis using python and as you can see, I need to master python syntaxes before I can say I want to use them to analyze data.
I have started off casually reading an ebook that I downloaded for free but yet to put anything into practice. I am going to download this app and work along with you on this journey. Perhaps you are the angel sent to push me to learn to code. Let's motivate ourselves.
We will be publishing our journey weekly.
What do you think?
Edit: So I started with the course and lost all my 3 hearts on a simple question. I was to fill in blanks to output the multiplication of 42 and 3.
Print(42 * 3)
It keeps telling me that it is wrong. How did you bypass this? I am certain that is the right syntax
As long as the numbers are integers that should output 126. However if 42 is a string it will output 424242.
So awesome if SoloLearn can help you on your journey because of this post. I’ll be posting updates for sure but weekly will probably be a little to much for me. Looking forward to seeing both of our progress though!
Thanks. I solved the puzzle :). I was using initial capital letter for the 'print'
You picked a great language to learn and it will come in handy for all sorts of things. Be prepared for the kids to outsmart you very quickly though, as I'm sure there will be a few computer whizz kids in the class!
lol yeah that sure might happen. Some of the kids that has applied for the class are really bright. Hopefully we can create an environment where we can learn from each others.
Sounds great and that's the perfect environment and I find the teachers who don't pretend that they know everything and are willing to learn from and listen to the kids are the best ones at the end of the day. What age kids do you teach, is it primary school age (4 to 12) or secondary school age (12 to 17/18)? I have two sisters who are primary school teachers here in Ireland.
I find the problem with these courses that there is a gap if you want to head over to applications. You then perphaps need to know how to deal with enviroments, pip, locate suitable modules.
But to get the basics under control this way is pretty nice.
Most of what you're saying there sounds quite foreign to me so there might be a gap yeah. This at least seems to work well for learning the syntax which is mostly what I'm after right now.
This looks so fascinating. I'm feeling a bit intimidated since my math skills are more than rusty and my last programming language was AMOS, but I'll try out Sololearn this evening. Huge thanks for making this post!
Awesome! Give it a try and tell me how it goes. Which language are you going for?
Python just like you. When you're a complete beginner, the best course of action is to imitate people who are way wiser.
Finished three lessons so far, then it turned out that my math skills aren't just rusty, they're an entire scrapyard. So I run out of hearts making stupid mistakes, but I'll sure take another approach tomorrow. The way the app is designed looks very promising. So yeah, thanks again, I owe you big.
lol the hearts can be annoying. I've only ran out a few times but I had those weird points I could refill them with. You get them at the end of lessons sometimes. Think it costs around 20 to refill.
Very nostalgic to see these conditions about age, I think they all start like this, and of course, the famous phrase "Hello World" was the first phrase I used in JavaScript when I was learning web development, but I gave up because it's not something I wanted.
Nice to see you learning Py, It's a language I'm interested in learning in the future, and maybe you can be interested in game development later. :)
Good luck in your learning and good studies!
Yes they seem to be pretty standard routines for most courses. But if it works it works. No need to change a winning team! I am definitely interested in game development. Would be cool to take it down that road someday.
SoloLearn is a good choice in learning how to code. It was also the where I learnt how to code too (Learnt C++ and Python). I'm glad to see that you are enjoying the classes and also good luck in your programming journey.
That's nice to hear! I plan on moving on to other languages after python as well. I'll most likely look at stuff suitable for building websites.
:P That's 2 more hours than I would try and figure anything out. Unless we are really interested in it.. like watching a super long movie or playing a LONG game.. I've only actually finished a handful of games..
Well it's kinda ironic in that sense. I have no issues blasting 200 hours into a video game but taking for than 3 hours to learn a skill is a big nope. so stupid lol
yup. thats me too.😁🙃😉
What a coincidence! I'm starting Python now too! Doing it through books but SoloLearn looks way better.
Awesome dude! You could give SoloLearn a go on the side of the books. It bases its teaching a lot on learning by doing. Good luck!
Mis respetos y felicidades, intente aprender por mi cuenta pero es casi tan difícil como aprender un idioma también lo siento como algo pendiente así que puedo comprenderte, ojala lo logres. Yo me conformaría con aprender cosas básicas jajaja
What made this "easy" for me was the fact that I knew some block-programming from before. It took me longer to understand that than it did to understand Python during this course. My biggest problem is remembering all the symbols and words and what they do. I plan on sticking to the basics until I know them perfectly before moving on to something more advanced.
Python is a good programming language, you can do a lot of things, success!
I tried learning programming some years ago but it felt like it was just too difficult for me to handle...
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