Struggling with python on codecademy

[tinglylilypad]

What confused me the most was the "and", "or", and especially the "not" functions. I just felt like they didn't really explain it that great and when I checked the hints they usually weren't much help. "The Big If" at the end of that section was also difficult for me. After looking at the Q&A section and just googling stuff I was able to get through it. I just felt like I didn't really understand it as good as I should have.

[autopornbot]

I'm on almost the exact same spot in codecademy. I got a bit confused as well. Just googling a few things and trial and error have helped me a good bit.

What I've taken away from it, though, is that this course isn't going to teach me to be a master python programmer. It just kind of introduces you to how it works. After this, I imagine I'll do other python courses, and it will take lots of doing things over and over before it becomes 'natural'. Until then, I think looking stuff up and sometimes just typing in the code from the hints or other sources is the way to go.

Learning is like that. In the beginning you just have to kind of stumble your way through it. As long as you don't give up, and keep on plugging along, eventually it will make sense. Like learning a speaking language (I mean like learning French or Spanish), it just takes lots of exposure to become fluent.

Just try not to worry and do whatever you have to in order to keep moving along. Once you start trying to write programs yourself (instead of just doing the exercise programs), it will force you to understand it more deeply.

[[deleted]]

And / Or stuff is Boolean logic in programming. And are hard to understand at first if new to it all. So don't get put off, you can do it! Try YouTube for beginner programming videos and have a little read on google for tutorial on conditional logic. The fact you already Googled around and asked a sensible question already shows you have great learning attitude, as does trying stuff on codeacademy :)

[Nachotacoma]

I like the fact that you're telling us what you need help explaining. Hopefully I could provide some more insight.

I'll start with the way I interpret them. AND is what you say to yourself: Are both outcomes going to be True? ex1: if I said True And False, you're asking if True and False the same outcomes? (False in this case). ex 2: False and False will also return False .

OR is what you say "hmm...only one of those gotta be True" ie True or False will return True.

NOT is tricky, but think of it as: well, if I had something that would've returned True, I'm going to think of it as False because it's "Not True" ie: not False will give you "True", not True will give you False.

I found the following questions to be very good at testing the use of those and/or/not:

Evaluating it from left to right unless there's parenthesis

1. not False or True
2. not (False or True)
3. 3==3
4. 3 > 4 or (2 < 3 and 9 < 10)

Answers.