Codeacademy

good idea

i just tore through the html exercises to refresh my memory, took me all of 15 minutes. css is apparently forthcoming, could use that refresher too.

in the meantime javascript has taken a backseat to SQL, which is the one that might get me hired given what i'm shooting for.

1. Further to discussion upthread, found this about why it's a good idea to get in the habit of keeping the { on the same line as preceding code in javascript: [Removed Illegal Link]/
(if anyone is going to say that this makes JS a pretty lousy language, along with tcl which I was complaining about upthread for the same reason, well, yeah)

2. I am two weeks behind on codecademy, have I missed anything or just another 4 versions of the same old recursive function tutorials?

3. I signed up for udacity's CS101 which has just restarted for a new semester with (apparently?) no deadlines this time around, because I wanted to learn Python, and holy hell does this seem time-consuming - each week's unit is 40 short videos plus 20 multiple choice questions plus homework, and even though the videos are all only 1-5 minutes long and we haven't covered anything I didn't already know yet, it took me all afternoon to watch the first half of week 1's videos

(I was waiting for an email and, OK, ILXing a little in between videos, but still)

what do you want to know re: python?

Bah, let's try that link again: [Removed Illegal Link]/

Philip: nothing specific really, I mainly just felt like dabbling. I write Perl for a living now, as does most of the team I'm in, and Perl obviously has a reputation as kind of old-fashioned, and the other dev team here uses mostly Python, so that's the most obvious new language to look at.

Yes, there are lots of books and ebooks and online tutorials, and I've bookmarked and downloaded probably tens of them already and never read them, so I thought having videos beamed into my home weekly might motivate me to do something...

(Also I liked the idea of building a search engine. I probably could build a basic one in a super-kludgy and horrible way in Perl, but I assume the course is going to do it in a much neater way.)

[Removed Illegal Link]/

[Removed Illegal Link]

I have no idea what is wrong with the link. http://bit.ly/I0h90Z ?

"Placing opening braces on the same line as their corresponding control statements like that is called K&R style."

that's exactly wrong, and the link he puts on 'K&R' says as much

oh, ok, in the third example they mention "Variant: 1TBS"

I write Python for a living, but I learned it on the job, so I haven't any experience in tutorials as such, but some people seem to like "Learn Python The Hard Way".

spacecadet, if you know perl, python will be a breeze. an easy project I'd suggest is making a CGI script that reads in an ILX page and replaces all instances of the word 'DUMPLINGS!' with something else. check pleac.sf.net for python versions of things you are familiar with in perl

Also doing the udacity thing, v intrigued by their stated goal of the learning equiv of a CS degree.

i haven't checked it out, but most CS programs don't teach you very much programming, so...

do people really stick with this?

it gets frustrating pretty fast

what's wrong with this code?

for (var i=100; i<=150; i++)
var square = i*i
if (i % 2 = 0)
{console.log(i);}
else
{console.log(square);}

something fishy on line 3

i want even numbers 100-150 and squares of odd numbers 100-150

100, 10201, 102, 10609, etc

Probably should be if i % 2 == 0.

Or strictly === 0

ah i forgot about those fucking ========

8======>

why don't they have a sidebar that says

"parts u will need: {, %, ==, etc" so i don't have to root around like a pig for answers in forums

took me long enough to remember the modulo

The for loop also needs braces.

anyone still doing this?

Does it have C#?

I dipped in when they added Python, but I'm not really "still doing it".

No C#: it has Javascript, Python, Ruby, and web stuffs (HTML, CSS, jquery). Think I finished the JS and the Python, dipped into the HTML/CSS but got bored early on, haven't tried jQuery or Ruby.

I need to get into this again got lazy/busy

if anyone wants to join me for python it's easier w/ a motivation buddy

I still need to do the jQuery & CSS ones. Job responsibilities currently more based in Python & SQL which I've been using for years, but will be doing more front end work in a couple of months so I need to get up to speed soon.

I did a bunch of the Python lessons and I learned a lot, but they're all user submitted, and vary wildly in quality. Some of them are so broken that it's impossible to tell when you did everything right and the parser is still refusing to accept the code, or when you did something wrong but the parser accepts your bad code anyway. It reminds me of having, like, an incompetent community college teacher working from a good book.

hi i love learning

im going to be learning this stuff in classes over the next few months.

would it, iyo, be worth bashing my head off these courses first or am i best off just absorbing it in real times at college

Blow through the official courses to get the gist, then mess around with the user-created code for a more significant hands-on experience. I'm not yet a 'coder' but I made some progress getting the mental framework together using this method.

tks will give it a blast (if i get time)

It's probably a good introduction to the mindset but your actual course may have a more pedantic focus so some of the more "this just works" aspects may need unlearning again afterwards, or not - depends a lot on the course.

What is the official title of your course and do you know what languages it'll be using?

(If it's called Computer Science it may be pedantic and hands-off; if it's called Information [___] Technology it may be hands-on, get-stuff-done-quick; if it's Software Engineering it may be hands-on but still pedantic; Informatics could be anything. These distinctions aren't made v. rigorously in the UK compared to in the US though, dunno about Ireland but may well be the same.)

also you will hate the lame jokes and Monty Python references throughout Codecademy but you'll probably hate everything 98% of your fellow students think is funny too so maybe it's good practice for that.

it's a higher diploma in computing, i bleev it specifically says computer science here and there

reading around the subject is always good.

Yeah, reading is good, sorry if I made it sound like it isn't.

Udacity's CS101 is OK (course materials are at https://www.udacity.com/wiki/cs101/downloads if you don't want to sign up - can't remember if you can see the youtubes without signing up) and brings up more concepts that you'll probably see on your course, but on the other hand there's something to be said for Codecademy's more fun and more hands-on approach too.

PS I am a serial CS-then-ICT dropout so actually probably the worst person to take the advice of

i'm doing the ruby section of this for fun and it really is fun. but i blew through like 60% of what's available in a short time. what is one to do next to make progress?

I'm doing this! Since it's been 10+ years since I had a programming class, I'm going all the way back to the beginning. I mean <em><strong>ALL</strong><em> the way back.

can you have friends on this thing? harbl, be my friend!

sent from my butt (harbl)
Posted: December 27, 2013 at 10:18:29 PM
i'm doing the ruby section of this for fun and it really is fun. but i blew through like 60% of what's available in a short time. what is one to do next to make progress?

build a websyteeeeee

i hope someone at codecademy is reading the funny stuff that i'm writing when they ask me to write paragraphs and stuff like that. seriously there's been some comedy gold, hope they're checking it out and laughing

youre the one theyve been waiting for

I might try doing this again. I petered out fairly quickly last time.

I know it would be deeply unethical, but it would be neat if they collected all of the things that people chose to wrote and published them as one <ol>list</ol>

btw this week i'll be peppering my posts with beginning html tags, hope everyone is ok with that

I can't find a way to add friends or start a custom ilxor group. boo.

Yeah I haven't done this for a while, been meaning to learn jQuery and also my html/css is super-rusty and I'm meant to do some web stuff for work now so it might be an idea to pick it back up, but I have mile-long list of good intentions of that kind so eh

yeah, it's kind of weird that they don't let you make a group or add "friends"! some commenters on one of their help page were speculating that codecademy intends to monetize the site by selling it to businesses/organizations, who would then get to take advantage of custom groups/friends/etc.

The problem with not doing it for several months is that they rewrite half the ones you've already done so they're not ticked off any more and my completionist tendencies go nuts

oh, didn't see this, karl. i did finish all of ruby but now i've done nothing for a few weeks so i forgot it all and too much to do with my actual job :(

1 Year Passes...

so yeah, i fizzled out as well. iirc, i started to sense that the instruction was really thin in some areas, like i was rushing through all of CSS in like 45 minutes and i needed way more time and repetition. i guess i should have just slowed myself down and assigned myself exercises and tried to experiment a little more.

but i kind of want to try something else out, a little more in-depth. has anyone tried udacity? are there other good alternatives? i'd be willing to pay a little bit for something a little better. a little for a little.

kinda feel like using these interactive tutorials as part of a wider constellation of instructional material is more useful than as a singular walled garden, like google a lot which is what u do when ur building a webiste irl, get a book, and most importantly work on an actual project, which i mean u do make actual websites so youve got that which the best learning environment

these learn 2 code exercise sites present such a small fraction of the actual issues u will encounter irl which is part of what makes them useful but also limits their effectiveness as a learning environment

yeah plan what you want to finish it and google every little roadblock til you get there imo

also read the documentation I found that stuff a lot more useful than college notes etc at times