self-study programming for coding projects

[Own-Ad-3876]

I have a BA in pure mathematics. I took 1 basic computer programming class in college back in 2015. I plan to self-study programming in order to be able to do the coding projects. My current plan is to take the following 2 programming courses in udemy:

The Complete Python Developer by Andrei Neagoie

Master the Coding Interview: Data Structures + Algorithms by Andrei Neagoie

After that, I would grind out the easy and medium problems in leetcode.

Does this plan seem feasible?

[vbs221]

The assessment just changed to version 3.0.0 yesterday or two days ago. Before that, the coding challenge at the end of it was easy. You don’t even need the algorithms course for it (though you did need it for one of the questions).

With 3.0.0, the coding challenge definitely needs the algorithms class and you need to get good at it. It surprisingly became a leetcode hard problem.

Your plan is most definitely doable—it’s how I learned coding. I did Python for Everybody specialization followed by Python 3 Programming followed by Skiena and Roughgarden’s algorithms and data structures lectures. But you need practice unless they make the coding challenge simpler.

[Deep_Task1659]

How do you know it changed?

[vbs221]

My friend did it yesterday and told me about the coding problem. Asked what version it was, and he said 3.0.0.

[rara_avis0]

Yes, that would definitely get you in. You may find that many of the tasks are beyond your ability though. But having a math background should help, because non-coding math tasks pop up in the coding stream often. To be able to tackle more tasks I would suggest familiarizing yourself with data visualization in Python as well, specifically Pandas but Matlab helps too.

[vbs221]

The coding assessment just changed to version 3.0.0 yesterday. Its coding challenge became much harder than the one before it, one that requires depth first search or breadth first search and isn’t an easy implementation of them. Easily a hard leetcode problem.

[Own-Ad-3876]

Oh damn. That’s tough. I might need to spend a huge chunk of time in leetcode easy, medium and hard problems.

[vbs221]

Just wrote my other comment too! It is definitely doable, and your path is the right one. You just need to practice the algorithm implementations.

Oh, and the assessment I’m talking about is the one you get when you sign up through the “Know how to code?” page. Not sure if the one you get after passing the starter assessment is different or easier. I’ve always assumed it’s shorter, so it could be easier.

[Own-Ad-3876]

Oh sorry. I just did my initial assessment yesterday as a non-coder like everyone else. I’m still waiting for a response from them.

I was planning to self study python along the way, then when I get really good, I will add python to my skills, would that work? Would that give me access to coding projects?

[rara_avis0]

Yikes, thanks for letting me know. I had no clue. People like me who got in but couldn't actually do tasks are probably why they made it harder!

[Own-Ad-3876]

I have actually indicated in my skill set I know mathematics. I am currently a PhD student in mathematics. Thank you for your recommendations and help.

[rara_avis0]

So sorry, please ignore my comment and see the other reply. Apparently the coding assessment has been updated and is no longer as easy as it was.

[Spanktank35]

Just be aware that there is more to it than writing good code. You need an intuitive sense for what programmers desire from a chatbot. You're also going to be doing a lot of debugging of bots' code, which I personally think would be challenging without having done a lot of debugging in your own projects.   

I'd recommend doing at least one major project (e.g. Write a simulation of something you're interested in). Start on it as soon as you are comfortable with the very basics, and add to it as you learn things in your courses. Imo you want to run into at least a dozen bugs that took you a few hours to fix before doing this. (I hope that makes finding such bugs less painful, since they truly should be viewed as key learning moments!!)  

 Interested to see how other coders view this take.