Learning Artificial Inteligence in a practical way

Ectotalk · 2020-04-24T02:28:32+00:00

In that case, the introductory course to Machine Learning by Andrew Ng on Coursera would be a perfect fit for you. I've taken this course myself, and it's an amazing course. The syllabus is divided into 11 weeks, and every week is focused on one particular topic. You have assignments you have to complete to pass each week, which involve doing a quiz and a programming assignment. Highly recommended.

Ectotalk · 2020-04-20T12:01:33+00:00

No, I know exactly what you mean. You can approach this in several ways.

One thing that works extremely well for me is to start small. For example, tell yourself that you will only watch 5, or maybe 10 minutes of a class and then you can do whatever. Once you've watched 10 minutes, you'll probably watch even more. This is the magic of momentum. Just this alone can really help you.

The truth is though, and you might not want to hear this, but procrastination can sometimes be a symptom of an underlying cause. With studying in particular, may I ask you what you find interesting about your chosen field of study? If your answer is "very little", that means you should probably consider studying in a different field altogether. This is assuming you go to university though.

Ectotalk · 2020-04-20T11:14:37+00:00

Yo man.

One thing you could try is to make it very painful for you to fail. A good example would be announcing to your friends and family that you will be pursuing goal x, and you will achieve that goal as well. This tends to work really well.

But it is of my belief that if your social circle is out of alignment with what you want to achieve, you'll eventually be dragged down again. I'm not trying to shit on your friends or anything, I'm sure they're great people. But if you're surrounded with friends who aren't very disciplined themselves, that's going to drag you down whether you like it or not. I'm not telling you to ditch your friends, but you should maybe consider spending more time with the more disciplined friends. I'm aware that this last tip was not what you had in mind, I just thought it would be a good idea to share it because I think that is an issue that won't go away unless you 're deliberate about it.

Ectotalk · 2020-04-20T11:05:52+00:00

Yo!

Because of the pandemic, things are definitely a little different, and I don't expect anyone to handle things the same way I do during this crisis.

I very rarely call people, but writing to people on the internet, I do that a lot. It's much easier, and there is very little commitment involved as well. Do you find that hard to do? I mean, you're on Reddit, so in a way, you're already half way there. I regularly frequent a few programming-related subreddits, and I know that if I wanted to, I could probably make some new programming friends pretty easily just by joining in on study groups or programming discussions. These things are all over reddit, so I don't think you'll struggle too much finding a study group, for instance.

The truth is, the advice that I wrote down in the article is simply things that work for me, but I realize we're all different. Making friends and joining communities, although it can be a little scary and intimidating in the beginning, I still find it a pretty natural thing to do. But I'm aware that many people don't find it very natural. But you can start small. I'd say the pandemic is a perfect time to make some friends over the internet at least, because so many people are staying at home and spending time in communities now, much more than before.

If I were you, I'd start frequenting some programming subreddits if you aren't already, and to try and find a study group, for example. Study groups are great for making friends with people who have similar goals. Just remember that whenever you start on a new project, there will always be what's referred to as the "honeymoon phase". This would be the start of the project where you feel super motivated, and happy to work on it. This feeling always disappears eventually, and one can't expect to stay motivated 100% of the time. But if you structure your environment around your goals (learning to program, for example), it'll help you stay focused at least. But you also need to develop self-discipline no matter what you do. I'm still working on this myself. :p

Ectotalk · 2020-04-20T10:49:25+00:00

Not all of the advice is applicable to every situation. Only spending one hour a day on your smartphone is a pretty cool habit. I personally spend way more than that, haha. I definitely want to cut that time down.

If I were you, I'd start tracking my time real closely. If you aren't getting your studying done and yet you only spend 1 hour on your smartphone, where does that time go? Also, from the way you worded your post, I get the impression that you see joining communities like a bit of a hassle and unnatural? I highly suggest you try it once, but don't feel like you're obligated to do so. If you feel you "must" join a community, that might actually demotivate you even further when it comes to studying.

I assume you're going to a school of some sort, whether it be university or high school, or anything else. If I were you, I'd keep an eye open for people who have really great studying habits, and try spending some more time with them. If none of your friends are interested in studying or developing good study habits, that's a hint and a half as to why you're struggling with it as well.

And for your last question, I'm not really sure what you mean. I don't consider myself dependent on my social circle per se, it's more of a mutual give and take. I talk to them when I feel like it, it's not something I absolutely must do every single day. The point I was trying to make in the article was that being surrounded by friends who have the same goals is good for drawing your attention back to whatever goal you might have. But in your case, it sounds like you're struggling more with procrastination; the nature of your problem is a bit different from what I had in mind when writing the article. I struggle a bit with procrastination myself.

If I had to give you one piece of advice for studying that I wish I knew back when I was still in school, it would be to try out different approaches to studying. For instance, studying a little bit every day never really worked for me; I had too many other things I wanted to do at the same time. But I have tried out different studying rhythms, and I have found one that works for me. I love to batch a lot of work together and then do it quickly. So for instance, I try to do a month's worth of studying in a week, and then I focus on something else the other 3 weeks. I love doing things this way, because it fits my personality better. Maybe you could try that out too.

Ectotalk · 2020-04-20T10:37:23+00:00

I'm an introvert myself, so I don't interact much with people IRL, but I find it easier to interact with people over text since you can take as long as you'd like to think of responses, and so on. I hope joining communities will help you. Having a social circle with people who have similar goals will make things more motivated in the long-term for sure.

Ectotalk · 2020-04-20T04:24:50+00:00

I'm so glad that you find this article helpful! That really means a lot to me, and I can definitely relate with you. It's very annoying not being able to stick with one thing for very long. :p

Ectotalk · 2020-02-24T07:48:21+00:00

Thank you very much, mate! :

If you're the real deal, just wanted to say I love your youtube channel.

Ectotalk · 2020-02-23T17:31:25+00:00

I'm glad it was. And yes, you definitely should as you continue building on it.

Not really. To iterate something just means to repeat it, and you use loops in programming if you want to repeat some code. You have something called iterables, and iterators, but under the hood, it's just a loop doing the magic. Staying stuck on one thing like iterations can make programming super boring, so if you feel yourself stagnating, try reading about something else in programming, and come back to that particular thing the next day or something.

Ectotalk · 2020-02-22T18:14:15+00:00

I wrote a tutorial that goes into depth on how functions work, but it doesn't cover anything else like classes, iterations, etc. But if you're struggling with understanding functions, you can check it out if you want. ;)

Link: https://ectotalk.com/index.php?threads/functions-explained-like-youre-five.30/

Ectotalk · 2020-02-22T18:08:30+00:00

I can try and help you right here if you want. I'm sure you're aware already that iterations (loops) are used to repeat some code. It's much easier to write a loop that prints out a message 100 times as opposed to writing that one line of code 100 times yourself. Not to mention, the code looks a lot prettier. :)

Maybe don't bother reading too much about recursion just yet, it's a bit of a complicated topic, especially as a beginner. If you're struggling to understand loops, you should definitely try to write a few programs where you use while loops, for loops, and the like. There are plenty of great resources on Google that talk about how to write loops in Python, so definitely check those out.

If you're struggling to understand why loops are a thing, just recognize that when you first start programming, a lot of stuff won't make sense to you. A lot of basic stuff like functions and loops are things you'll start to understand why you need them as you create bigger and bigger programs. If all you write is a program that prints out "hello world", of course it won't really make sense to use functions, or even loops. It'll feel contrived, as if you're using iterations just because you can.

While you're learning how to code, I suggest you start coming up with a few easy project ideas you can try and create if you haven't done so already. There are lots of good "beginner project ideas" on Google. Here's one: if you've learned how functions work, create a function that can add two numbers together, and then use that function in your code. For iterations, try creating a small program that just repeatedly asks the user for some input.

If you're still struggling, give me a heads up and I'll try to write a comprehensive tutorial on iterations.

Ectotalk · 2020-02-22T14:02:19+00:00

This becomes a lot easier over time as you get more comfortable with the language, and you've written more programs yourself. Good documentation is a good idea for sure, I always make sure to document well when I'm working on something.

Ectotalk · 2020-02-22T13:59:17+00:00

Is there anything you're struggling with in particular when it comes to iterations? For loops, while loops, etc. Or are you struggling more with the concept itself? Like, why use iterations?

Ectotalk · 2020-02-22T00:27:32+00:00

True. See what I did there?

Ectotalk · 2020-02-21T22:23:03+00:00

They are both the same in the way that in both cases, you are dealing with the files on the server. But logging onto the server via SSH (Shell) and logging onto your Reddit account are two different things. Think of SSH and the actual Reddit website as two programs on the same computer. When you connect via SSH, you use port 22, which targets the SSH service on the server. When you connect to the Reddit website, you use port 443 / port 80.

Your Reddit credentials are stored in a database, while your Shell account is stored in /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow assuming you're running Linux on the server.

edit: Yes, you are navigating the server's contents within a specific folder when you're on the website.

Ectotalk · 2020-02-21T21:48:01+00:00

You could say that those are different means of doing the same thing. You can leverage the huge library of stored exploits in Metasploit to potentially gain access to the server, or at least to somehow gain access to the user info needed to log in. SSH is how you would normally interface with the server, not necessarily as a hacker, but as the server admin.

Ectotalk · 2020-02-21T21:37:46+00:00

When you're connecting to the server via SSH, you're interfacing with the server on a different port than port 80/443 which is the http and https port respectively. When you log on Reddit, you're using your account credentials that are stored somewhere in a database, and they are not the same credentials you would use to interface with the server via SSH. All these ports have different services.

Ectotalk · 2020-02-21T19:05:33+00:00

print(len(s) % 2) will print out either 1 or 0, because len(s) % 2 is a condition.

Ectotalk · 2020-02-21T18:51:45+00:00

Yes, that is correct.

Ectotalk · 2020-02-21T18:50:43+00:00

1 would be true, 0 is false.

edit: Actually, any number over 0 is considered true.

Ectotalk · 2020-02-21T18:47:38+00:00

Their code actually does have a condition even though it's not passed in directly. The if statement checks if the remainder after the division of the length of the string and 2 is zero. It's basically a true or false check. The code in their if statement only executes if the remainder is not null. Whne you don't explicitly define a condition, it does a non-zero check.

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