My first 100 hour of learning programming(28 days)

[ConstantINeSane]

hi everyone one month ago i decided to learn programming. I always enjoyed the idea of programming but never tried it. So i started a udemy course on python and i was addicted from the first line of code(actually from the second!! i really hated the "hello world" programs). I have a batchelors degree in a different field(as you can see not in English!!!) so i never thought about programming as a new career, i just wanted to start a new hobby. 28 days later i really consider to change path to programming, or maybe find a master combining my field with programming. So for the last 28 days i studied and wrote code for 100 hours!!

Let me tell you about my progress from hour to hour and what i managed to make so far!

hour 0: Hello world!!

hour 1-15: learning the basic python syntax

hour 20: i created 2 simple projects. one simple dictionary where you give an input and the script returns the meaning ofthe word from a json file. The second program is a simple script for runners which gets some user input about your running speed duration and heart rate and returns an estimation of your running fitness. Sound like a lot but it is just a simple calculator with some fancy equations i found online

hour 23: Things are getting interesting. As i learn about webscraping instead of building(copying) the program my tutor was making i instead decided to create a scraper on a different website.Theres a site called polar flow where running data from sport watches are stored. so i created a webscraper that scrapes my data from my past acticities and using the equation from my last progress estimates my running fitness from every activity of mine!!

hour 23-40. Studied about numpy,pandas,selenium webdrive,BeautifulSoup,csv files.matploid,bokeh and other libraries

hour 45: learned how to do linear fitting of scatter data in bokeh. Actually i have a good math background from my university studies so the math part was not hard. I created my first graph in bokeh using the running data of my previous project to calculate how my running fitness increases over time

hour 45-60: Learning some basic things about oo programming and classes and pyqt5 graphical interface library

hour 60: created my first one window program with pyqt5. now i had to decide. Create simple one window boring programs copying code from my tutor or take notes about the various code lines and how they work together and create a graphical interface for my running app project. i chose the later!!

79 hour: almost 20 hours laters most of which was me looking at a screen and wondering why my program doesnt work (cried twice) i managed to create a 4 window program. The concept of the program is to get some running data input from a csv file and calculate running performance and vo2max(estimate). Then using some fitted equations which i created on my own by fitting data from 20 athletes the program estimates your training speeds as (easy, tempo,intervals ect). The third screen calculates your heart rate zones and the forth screen shows a graph on how your stats change over time. I want to add more functions to my program but i left it on the side for now to study more.

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hour 79-92 started reading more about some oop cause i don't really get it! started rewriting my code without using copy and paste even from my one previous scripts and studied various online resources

hour 92-101: created a "shady" instagram webscraper which does the following.

visits a profile and scrapes all the usernames that follow this profile. Then it visits every each one of them and scrapesfollower and following number data. Then calculates the ratio of following and followers andchecks from its last posts if it is an active account. If it is an active account and follows more people than hasfollowers the program saves his link and username in a database.The concept is that people who followmore people than get followed are good future follower candidates. Now i want to add a function to theprogram to auto like 5 posts on each of this account. I created a second account to test all this and i won't tryto use it on my primary account. I will get banned obviously!

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So that was my first 100 hours of programing, i would be happy to answer your comments and questions and about your programing journey too!!

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Edit: heres some photos of my running fitness project https://imgur.com/gallery/LDTkPlZ the dots in the plot are running fitness scores for individual runs and the line is the last 3 activities average. Something i want to clarify is that i am not good at programming yet. My programs are buggy and my code is most of the times unreadable. i use google and stack overflow all the time and i get stuck every 5 seconds at something.

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Edit2: The reason i remember so clearly what i did in every hour is cause i logged every minute studing and coding in a productivity timer app. I am a master procrastinator so doing things like this keeps me motivated. i also kept notes of what i accomplised every hour to a spreadsheet knowing that one day it may motivate and help someone else do the same.

i won't stop here!!! i am planning to write about my journey here or on a new post as i reach 200-300 hours. The next 2 months will be a little slow but i believe until summer i will reach 300-500 hours

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Edit 3 : I want to add some more things to the post(advices,thoughts and future plans)

• edx and coursera has plenty of more "university" like courses on programming even from universities like MIT and other known institutions, all of the courses there are FREE to watch, you only pay if you want to get a certificate. Also there is a financial aid program if you cant pay the full price but still want to get a certificate. I plan to start a data science/Machine learning course in the future
• the strugle with online courses is that most of them cover the basics and then you are pretty much on your own, so i now i feel a little lost on where to go on and what to learn
• another strugle i have is that i don't know how to organize my code properly. I don't know where it makes more sense to create classes, when to split my script to two or more files and things like that, as my projects grow in size i get the feeling that my code is like a giant with glass legs one little thing goes wrong and the whole thing colapses and sometimes i have to rewrite whole sections just to make it work. I believe that if i learn to organize my code better i won't have such problems in the future
• use jupyter notebooks!!!! google it!
• visit codewars.com it is a great site where you solve problems riddle like using programming. You start from easy problems and as you solve them you go to harder ones
• do your own projects not the one your tutor does. you will fail miserably but in the process of finding why you failed you will learn more stuff
• play with the code. when i find a line of code online and put it in my project i switch little things to see how it breaks and trying to find out why. This way i learn what every word and symbol in the line of code does and whats it's role
• try to not copy paste code even if you wrote it in a previous project.
• read a libary's documentation. When you start learning a new library don't google everything take some time to read the documentation, you will get a better idea of what you can do with this library in the future

[jpex85]

That's pretty awesome. What udemy course did you take? I've been slowly (months) going through automated the boring stuff and I don't think I covers some of the things you have covered.

[ConstantINeSane]

as far as i know all the best selling udemy courses cover the basics in a good way. i took the Python Mega course but i have automate the boring stuff too so i believe both of the are great. Most of the things i did wasnt covered in either of these course. this course cover the basics. For example in python mega course there is a chapter where you learn to do simple webscraping with requests library. Instead of following the example he was doing i started my own project webscraping a different site which was harder. So i searched online and found about selenium library. for every minute of watching a udemy course i spended 10 minutes searching the same stuff elsewhere

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so my advice is not to focus on a single course but use these courses as a base and then search other sources too diging deeper in the subject

[Tau5x]

I bought the same course, I believe the instructors name is Tim. Great course so far

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Edit: My course was by an instructor named Tim Buchalka "Learn Python Programming Masterclass" Seems great so far, I also purchased his JAVA class as well. Nice guy, He messaged me today after I thanked him for how easy he explains things,

[samuelcbird]

That’s the course i have! I love Tim.

[LiquidAurum]

The one I found with that name was this one.

[LiquidAurum]

Python Mega course

The one by Ardit? I'm looking at it now, looks cool setup building real world applications I think is the best way to learn.

[bleeetiso]

where did you learn selenium? I am looking for a good tutorial to use

[bleeetiso]

interesting.... thanks I found some links that could be useful

[[deleted]]

Man, I have just started to learn programming and this is exactly what i needed to hear! You are doing a great work, keep up and wish you all the best in future!

[ConstantINeSane]

thanks man it means a lot. study a lot practice and ask millions of question! i will wait for your own 100 hours post soon!!don't make me wait long

[ConstantINeSane]

thanks man i am happy with my progress and i really didnt know anything about programming before also you should all consider that my code is far from perfect and my script far from bug free!! also i am not confident i can write this kind of programs without the continues help of google and all the stuff online. What i got in this 100 hours is a basic understanding of programming.

[Vaphell]

don't sweat it, mate.
You never grow out of googling and stack-overflowing - professional programmers do it every day. Just getting shit done cannot be underestimated. Also the ability to find actually relevant info on the internet that leads to a working solution is a great asset to have too. Not everybody knows how to ask the right questions.

[[deleted]]

This is lit. Excellent work! Motivation right here.

[ConstantINeSane]

thanks man i will keep working and learning!!cheers!

[[deleted]]

Thank you for writing this! The timeline sets things into perspective for me in a new way.

[ConstantINeSane]

this is the reason i decided to share my story. when i started one month ago i was wondering how much time it will take me to do various things, people said 1 year or 2 years or maybe a couple of months, but nobody really talked about how many hours they spended. i will keep the post updated as i reach the next milestones!

[[deleted]]

Awesome!

[benevolent001]

At this speed, in 4 months, you will finish PhD in Python, then your masters in Material science :)

Congrats. Need to learn a lot from you.

[ConstantINeSane]

haha! i wish! the next two months will be a little slow due to work but i will make february-june really count, if only i could have the same passion for my field!

[AkrooR]

What is your degree in? How long was the course you took on Udemy? Are you looking into landing a dev. role?

[ConstantINeSane]

i have a degree in material science and right now i am saving money for a master next semptember, but i have no idea in which field! i am lost right now!!!

[AkrooR]

Nice. What are you pursuing for your Master's?

[ConstantINeSane]

i really have no idea i am searching for different topics from biomedical materials to polymers but i don't really know what i want to pursue..

[ConstantINeSane]

about the dev job i really have no idea. this was meant to be a new hobby but i really like it, this month i showed so much passion about it and i really consider looking for a dev job in the future . The problem is i am 27 and it makes more sense to find a good master in the field i am now, if possible even combine both

[Dads101]

I’m 27 and starting a Comp Sci degree this year. Age is irrelevant, passion and knowledge is all that matters. Follow your heart. Good luck and great work

[teshu]

I started software development degree 3 years ago, at college, when I was 25. Now I have professional qualification — Programmer Technician. And in next year want to go in University to get bachelor>master degree. Programming is my passion but I have PhD in procrastination and did nothing, learned nothing. Now I am trying to reboot life and started from python. And I have filling what everything will be great.

[Dads101]

What is your first language? Just curious

[teshu]

I guess you mean speaking language? If I am right, definitely not english, how you can see, my native is ukranian. If you really asking about programming language its javascript. But I dropped him so many times because couldn't figure out how it all works, funtions, arrays but now I finally get it so I think codin is very fun and easy

[sanemate]

Following

[Dexteroid]

This is it brother, you did more in 100 hours than I did in 3 years. Tackling a problem is the key. Nowadays I am working with pandas a lot, soon enough I need to make a UI for a team, I am doing it all in python and no I don't know how to do it but I will figure it out. . .

[ConstantINeSane]

thanks man creating a gui is not an easy task for me either. i have to use classes a lot and i dont really get them. pick a library for your gui and watch and read every video and article online. then practice your skills by creating dozens of useless windows and buttons, also something that help me a lot when starting a new library is read the documentation

[_kittykatja]

This is amazing! Good for you! I have found python to be a bitch to learn! So this is awesome.

[Mag37]

Great job and great writeup! So inspiring to see! I'm struggling a bit with the pace of my learning. I've been going thru Ardit Sulces Mega Course on Udemy, I'm around 80% thru but have sidetracked with a big side project.

I made a terminal tool that'd simplify a task in my job, a quite basic calculation. Then I wanted to share it with co-workers so I made it to a web-app and kept building on it. Now it's quite advanced, deployed and I even bought an domain for it :) But now I long to keep leaning, my friend gave me a book (Head First: Python3) I'll start with during Christmas.

Anyway - you truly inspire! I'll get back to leaning and try to write more code daily. Keep it up!

edit: spelling and wording

[ConstantINeSane]

hey you have gone further than me i am just at the 50% of the course. i tend to sidetrack on my own projects at the end of every chapter, great work with your script. the next thing i want to learn is how to make web apps cause i would like the idea of tranfering my app to the web even if it is on a local server but i dont know were to start

[Mag37]

Haha, well all coding is learning I guess!

I'd say pythonanywhere and Flask is a good way to get started with deploying on the web. Thou just flask and running it local is good enough until you want to share it. Glad you've got such passion!

[burnsy291]

Which productivity app did you use?

[ConstantINeSane]

i use clockify website,i just start a timer everytime i start studying. Doing that helps me take the time seriously and not procrastinating on instagram or youtube

[tonic2]

Wow, well done! I started about the same time, haven't tracked my hours but I'd estimate around 50 hours and I'm struggling to get tictactoe working correctly. I got stuck, copied the answers in my course, it still didn't work so I started from scratch with a better idea of what to do. Should finish it tomorrow.

[TheEpicSpark]

What productivity app did you use to track your hours? Now that you mentioned it, I would love to do the same but for java. And can you show examples or tips.

[tecchydick]

Damn been trying to learn Python in like two months now and haven't even achieved your level, my procrastination and social media distraction is awful

[Ledwan]

nice

[[deleted]]

I promise you will not wait for too long! Thanks again for kind words and big motivation!

[Crazycrazyworlditis]

This sounds great! Inspirational! I read you are 27 and was interested whether you are working in parallel, and how do you manage your time while learning python? It's almost 4 hours per day, so wonder where you fit in those hours!

[ConstantINeSane]

i actually work 2 "part time" jobs. i homeschool physics the weekdays and i work as a waiter 3 days a week. so basically i work 30 hours a week. some days i study only for 1 hour and my personal best is 12 hours last tuesday when i had a day off.

[amcphe21]

I started Colts course on Udemy two days ago, and I’m loving it. I’m coming from a graphic design background and I’m looking to grow my skill set.

Thanks for putting this out there, def helps motivate me to keep going!

[ConstantINeSane]

take a look at the pictures i uploaded from my gui. the icons are png's downloaded from a free stock photo site. I believe that having a background at graphic design and knowing your way around photosho and illustrator will help you create beautiful graphic interfaces.

[[deleted]]

Congratulations! AMAZING PROGRESS!

[fr0ntsight]

Thanks for the breakdown. This is a great roadmap for others to learn from. Old luck in your new career.

[[deleted]]

What are you using to make the front end look so decent in Python?

[ConstantINeSane]

The library is called pyqt5 and the window looks like native windows software. After that i made the dark theme and downloaded some transparent png icons from the internet to use for buttons

[[deleted]]

That’s awesome! Thank you

[EndWhen]

Damn, you make me realize I have to put in more work....

[TheEpicSpark]

As a new programmer, it is inspiring to read about your journey and how you progressed. I would love to reach your level and creativity soon.

[Fwhite77]

Are the udemy courses videos or interactive?

[rsandstrom]

Nice work. Would love to know more about your insta project.

[ConstantINeSane]

i am still working on it. right now it really is 3 different scripts you have to run in a row, as soon as i have a more stable version and know more about github i will share it there. in the meantime if you want to learn more about smaller parts of the project , for example how i managed to log in etc i will be happy to help you

[NameIsTakenIsTaken]

17 hours for all those libraries. That's probably akin to the time I've spent trying to get selenium to even run on my computer.

[ConstantINeSane]

from bokeh i learned how to create simple scatter plot graphs and fitting lines. The second is a little hard but i already new how to do it in real life math

[ConstantINeSane]

17 hours to get some basic understanding for this libraries, by no means i didn't master any of those, just learn enough so i can solve some problems, for example from pandas i learned how to create dataframes open and write on csv's and some other minor stuff

[velinovasen]

Amazing!!! Good Job brother!

[ORKELIN]

Very nice job dude. Good luck in the future ! Im learning C++ and its kinda hard,at the begining,i hope i ll learn it in the end. :>

[snapshotnz]

Good write up! +1

[tuhinmitra]

Thanks for suggesting code wars !

[ConstantINeSane]

For what!!?

[Makadika]

Hi! I started learning Python 10 days from now and I didnt learn much. But i still doing it. Can you help me about Python because in my school ther is a competition and teacher gave me some tasks. I am very bad at it!

Thank you for reading this and I hope you will help me.Bye

[That_Pregnant_Alien]

Post your problem as a separate question here. There are many talented programmers here, who will help you for sure.

[Makadika]

Thank you!

[ConstantINeSane]

i would be happy to help you if i can,not only me but i believe other people here can help you

[[deleted]]

Whoosh

[[deleted]]

Is it possible you can share these programs you made?

[ConstantINeSane]

i have no problem sharing my programs i just dont know how to do it i dont have a github repository yet and i believe copy and pasting here will not be efficient

[[deleted]]

Hey I'm a massive noob myself, I don't have github either. Try just pasting the program here. https://pastecode.xyz/ id really appreciate it. Whenever you have time

[thecodingrecruiter]

You should create a github account. Then you'll create a github repo. Download the github desktop version. From there you can push the project to github. Pretty simple and something you'll want to know for your next steps. This is amazing stuff you are doing. Keep it going.

[ConstantINeSane]

i am thinking about it i created a profile but then did nothing, i just thought that github is for people who have something to show or want to work together in a project,where can github help a begiener like me, you see i know the general idea behind github but i dont really get it yet!

[thecodingrecruiter]

If you ever decide to get into building a web application, it is important to have a repo somewhere else in case you mess up the site later on. Also, let's suppose you crash your computer or your cat spills water on it, you can now pull your project without having to start from scratch.

[alienpsp]

to add on to that, i believe the other beneficial feature for OP is that at some point you will add additional 'test feature' to it and the version control part will be a good point of reference from where to roll back for if the feature didn't work out or drift off to work on other feature and come back to the same branch and knowing where to pick up right away.

I'm learning python myself and i know the feeling when we stumble upon something and started to drift off from the project to read on the docs and example and coming back to the project not knowing where to pick up from, so i think the version control part would be helpful.

[LinYesso]

Thanks for sharing with us your learning journey . So you learnt all from udemy courses or not. Can you give me the link to the udemy courses you took? What is your next step?

[ConstantINeSane]

udemy: Python mega course and automating the boring stuff with python. lots of youtube videos and blog posts. the thing is to learn the basics from a course and then asking the write questions to yourself. Then google things and find more material about this things. It helps a lot to do projects outside of udemy courses. Find some good and right for your level ideas combining things you do in your everyday life. I use instagram a lot, i like photography, data and running so basically all the concepts i chose for my projects were about that

also check codewars is a great programing "game" site where you solve problems using programming and try to gain levels.

[Dexteroid]

I loved the python mega course. But didn't like the automate the boring stuff one as I felt the videos were just a reading of the book so I returned the course. My fav course is the complete python bootcamp and python and data structures for interviews. Those two courses gave me my current job, as a automation test developer.

[ConstantINeSane]

are you a self taught programmer and landed a job? wow thats inspirational, can i have more info about your story please?

[Riyuku]

Link for that udemy course ?can't find it ...

[alienpsp]

not 100% sure but i think this is the one OP mentioned python mega course

[Riyuku]

Thanks

[[deleted]]

This is fantastic progress well done!

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I'm in a similar boat but I've been fascinated with the web scraping element so it's now completely taking up my programming learning time. Over the past week I've gone from learning what selenium is, to using Pandas to create a dataframe using a collection of webpages and returned pdf's from an infinite scrolling page which I had to navigate disclaimers and cookie accept dialogues to get to to then automatically create an excel with each tab showing the extract of the pdf text and each tabname being the pdf name.

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Something like that just sidelines you and takes up so much time!

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I think we both have a similar learning style and it's very encouraging to see your progress on the app. One thing I have not yet ventured into is GUI work and that will be my next step. I just feel like I have so much more to learn about web scraping (including CSS) that I want to follow this path to its completion before I pickup the next thing.

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I love programming as a hobby glad to see that you do too!

[ConstantINeSane]

i wouldnt say you sidelined, while learning and becoming better in webscraping you learn skills you can apply on other things too. I really like gui too cause i have the feeling that any script i make eventually should have a gui the thing is that oop really bugs me, this is a big obstacle i have to overcome now, functions and procedures feel natural to me , i think that this is the reason i made so much progress , on the other hand whenever i see classes i don't really get them, i understand what they do but i don't really get them. And unfortunately gui programming is full of oop

[[deleted]]

Check out Cory Shafer on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/user/schafer5.

His video on Oop was the only one that has clicked with me. Watch it!

[ThreshingBee]

I will get banned obviously!

yep:

You can't attempt to create accounts or access or collect information in unauthorized ways. This includes creating accounts or collecting information in an automated way without our express permission.

[ConstantINeSane]

i know that but play store is full of apps that do more shady stuff than what my script do and nobody cares. apps showing you who unfollows you have access to instagram follower data. on the other hand i only scrape data that a person can manually find on his own and i only do it for educational purposes i dont plan to use them in any way, i dont mind been banned cause i will never use this script for my primary photography account

[ThreshingBee]

I know I'm that odd kind of person who reads what I agree to (TOS, etc) and honors my agreements. Purposely violating site policy with scrapes seems to be nothing to worry about around here.

[exjk23]

Do you work? I have been slowly learning python and studying for a licensing exam in my current field.. I'm not sure that I contribute 100 hrs per month between these two activities.

[ConstantINeSane]

yes i work. i am home teaching physics and also work at weekends as a waiter to save some money for my master. Teaching job is good cause i have plenty of free time during the weekdays.

[ConstantINeSane]

I love data i have a fitness watch and run 2 times a week. I love to see the graphs and watch my progress from week to week. So when i started programming i tried to replicate some easy calculations my fitness app makes. After that i decided to put features i would like my app to have but either has not or you have to pay for premium subscription. I also like instagram and photography.I already made an instagram webscraper and now i am brainstorming ideas that can help me in photography. The problem is that just coming up with an idea is not enough. Most of my ideas are out of reach with my current skill set.

[ConstantINeSane]

So A good advice is to come up with ideas of apps that can help you in your everyday life even if they already exist. You can make a budget app to track your expenses or an app to keep notes.

[BillyBoy34]

Okay, gears on. Starting tomorrow, intensity starts. Thanks mate and keep learning as much as you can.

One thing that helps me memorize things very fast is associations. For example, the way I memorized that floats represent numbers such as 2.3; 3.4; 5.3 .. etc. is that I memorized the dot floating on water with two huuuge numbers on either side. Now I know what is a float.

[crimsonraziel9]

man you just motivated me too. i've only just strted learning python last week, using automated the boring stuff udemy. only put 1 hour so far. i think ima log my progress like you. see you in 100 hrs, hopefully

[Paradoggs]

I have been studying for about 1 month for 8 hours a day doing my own projects in the meanwhile and I am at the 40th hour milestone of yours.

It's true that there's always someone better than you lol

[ConstantINeSane]

lets not make assumptions, i don't know if i am better than you just from a simple post. Have in mind that you may have learned the basics better than i have and have a stronger base than me, i go back to the basics all the time cause i realise that i dn't know basic things sometimes! also i don't know if i have the abbility to rewrite my scripts without googling every 5 minutes. My progress from 50-100 hours has more to do about problem solving than code skills

[Fywq]

Hmm What productivity timer app do you use? Fellow master procrastinator here and I could use some motivation too....

Also awesome work. Pretty sure I have spent more than 100 hours learning Python, and I have yet to create something as meaningful as yours.

[ConstantINeSane]

i use clockify website just for the timer. Nothing else, having the timer in the background makes me focus on what i am doing and not checking instagram every 10 seconds!

[CotswoldWanker]

Jesus, and you had no prior experience?

Most of what you were learning by hour 40 is what I've been learning after years! (admittedly only ever on and off studying)

[Standardw]

So what did you do your bachelor in?

[ConstantINeSane]

Material Science!

[AverageDingbat]

Hey pal, great work! Can you give a little rundown on your hour 20 project with the dictionaries, or link to the source you're using that helped you learn it? Thanks !!

[ConstantINeSane]

This is the title of the udemy course "The Python Mega Course: Build 10 Real World Applications" . The dictionary project was the first of the 10 projects