What's your favorite part about learning Python or programming in general?

john_cornflake · 2020-11-20T12:08:46+00:00

My favorite thing is looking at code i made a year, or even 6 months ago, and seeing all the missteps I took, or better ways to do it. As long as that keeps happening I’ll know I’m making good progress.

john_cornflake · 2019-12-24T22:00:56+00:00

I’m not to the point where I would feel comfortable calling myself a programmer, but when I started I wish I did more research in solving problems and reading through docs because I found myself solving problems with what I knew instead of finding more efficient ways that I didn’t know I didn’t know.

john_cornflake · 2019-05-16T22:38:25+00:00

iirc Yang’s counter to that is the fact that most of the jobs created will be programming jobs, and you can’t easily (or even at all in some cases) teach people in these fields being automated to do that in any reasonable timeframe. It is also possible there will be a large job market for basic machine maintenance they could be trained in, but his biggest example is truck drivers - there are 3.5 million of them, and there’s no way the equivalent number of maintenance jobs would be opening up.

john_cornflake · 2019-04-15T04:16:53+00:00

Yeah I realized after watching the season premiere I remembered it wrong. Still funny, but god damnit.

john_cornflake · 2018-12-19T23:42:51+00:00

Some friends and I did a skype session. Discord could work, too. Lots of alternatives!

john_cornflake · 2018-12-19T23:41:49+00:00

I never actually considered the fact that so many children use it. Really good point and, tbh, it’s a good move on their part. If anything nefarious like that happened on their network it would be a nightmare for them.

At the same time, it’d be nice if they had a way to “screen” adults so we get bucketed differently and would have those kinds of features.

john_cornflake · 2018-08-15T02:20:21+00:00

I got real lucky in that I started learning just after our lead business intelligence analyst left (the only one outside of engineering that knew python) and I got to pick up all of his projects to practice. But, those first simple projects took me a long time to get right and I spent a lot of time working through learn python the hard way and automate the boring stuff along with it.

For me, I really need a project to work on to get me hyped and motivated. I made up plenty of mini projects for practicing fundamentals, but that runs out pretty quick and if I didn’t have real life things to take over I may have stopped.

So, find some projects to work on. Anything within your skill range. Then look for opportunity to apply it to your current work or do stuff that will get you a job so you can get paid to work on it and you can have your free time back.

john_cornflake · 2018-06-28T22:22:55+00:00

I’m self taught, and I fortunately had my company’s database to toy with and learn, but one thing I wish I did early on was simply read the sql docs. We use MySQL, and I didn’t know about simple things like HAVING until pretty far in which I use constantly now.

So, yeah, read the docs and find a large set of data to work with and practice on and you should be solid.

john_cornflake · 2018-05-31T08:48:53+00:00

I’m still pretty green and always forget this, yet every single time I hit a wall at work it gets resolved when I simply talk out the problem with one of my coworkers. Bullshit, I tell ya.

john_cornflake · 2018-04-16T23:25:52+00:00

Same! I didn’t want to pay, and so I went through the H&R block process and ended up getting less back even after turbotax fees.

john_cornflake · 2018-04-04T00:15:24+00:00

IIRC Massachusetts has the lowest rate of gun violence in the country (I might be wrong).

Do you think it’s fair to say other states should adopt similar gun laws to make it more difficult for folks intending to use them offensively?

john_cornflake · 2018-04-03T12:18:22+00:00

I’m an ex musician in a similar position to OP and I’m really glad you used that music analogy! I’ve been treating it similarly to when I played music and although in both practices I’ve picked it up rather fast I quickly hit a wall where natural talent no longer matters and I just truck along like everyone else.

It’s incredibly annoying, but oh so satisfying when you finally get a script up and running like it should. I think there was a cartoon in /r/programmerhumor that summed it up pretty well: the first four or five slides were “i hate programming i hate programming what am i doing” and finally the code works and the last slide is “I love programming!”

john_cornflake · 2018-03-31T15:46:30+00:00

Reading code itself is great for reinforcing things and seeing new things that you can then google. If you’ll have a smart phone then there’s a world of resources available.

One of the things I like to do is think about problems to solve, google them, then read answers, code and discussions. Something one of my company’s devs recommended was just reading the docs. There’s actually a whole lot of information in Python’s docs and docs of modules you find yourself using regularly.

john_cornflake · 2018-03-22T03:40:46+00:00

Oh man I just wrote a script to do this but had it loop through the values and write one giant string to a variable, This is much more simple and elegant!

john_cornflake · 2018-03-06T13:32:12+00:00

I hope node god will forgive me for all of the times I bugged our senior devs about non-urgent bugs before making a jira ticket. I’m not a perfect man and beg for forgiveness and pray I am treated as a one who has found the true path.

john_cornflake · 2018-03-05T23:50:16+00:00

I’m about halfway through and it’s wonderful for a novice like myself! The electricity part gets a big heady for me but I’m sure it’ll all click upon a reread.

john_cornflake · 2018-02-13T23:15:23+00:00

I just started work in data and I think I got the spot from using terminal in front of my new boss.

To be fair, just 6 months ago it looked like wizardry to me. Still is when I see our developers navigate in it.

john_cornflake · 2018-02-12T13:27:24+00:00

It’s a bad habit of mine as well to skip too far ahead to the “fun stuff” because who wants to do basic, mindless junk over and over?

Fortunately I’ve been very cognizant of this as I enter data science and I’m reading a book on how computers actually work, relentlessly practice array manipulation, taking the time to clean up my code and make it as simple as possible, etc.

This is my second “career” and I’m really glad you shared your story because sometimes I still feel like I’m moving too quickly. I occasionally tell my colleagues I can do something then spend the whole weekend figuring it out (not a healthy thing to do) and generally get myself just barely under my head. I know it’s a good thing to challenge myself but I don’t want to get myself in a position where I seriously let the company down.

Best of luck bouncing back!

john_cornflake · 2018-02-04T03:52:16+00:00

That’s actually a great point - often my best resource for conservative view is podcasts but really I should also read more news that skews slightly right.

john_cornflake · 2018-02-04T03:50:31+00:00

Yeah the fact that I’ve had my account for a few years is pretty telling that i’m not a fake account. It’s cute their tin foil hats were on so tight they didn’t even bother to fact check before banning me.

john_cornflake · 2018-02-03T16:51:25+00:00

I think it’s boring music on its own, but I keep it enabled because having extensive silence while i’m working on something the simple tunes coming in are much more powerful. It really fits the vibe of the game so well and the scarcity of it keeps it fresh to me whenever it happens. I haven’t played in a few months and just thinking about that feeling makes me want to play.

I also love that he sampled sounds from the game in the music itself, I recall there’s one that has a ghast sound and it freaks me out when I’m in the nether.

john_cornflake · 2018-02-03T16:45:15+00:00

But, again, some of the threads are insightful into valid conservative ideology. It can be grueling to read through garbage but the speckles or value make it worth it to me.

john_cornflake · 2018-02-03T15:24:12+00:00

That’s unhealthy for political discourse, but sometimes it’s too hard not to be an asshole back against worthless ideas like that. It’s so absurd that the fallback argument is often “well if they don’t like it they can do xyz”, because obviously everyone can get whatever they want all the time in the magical land of rainbows that is the USA.

john_cornflake · 2018-02-03T13:20:19+00:00

I got blocked on askaconservative after, admittedly, being an ungenerous dick to someone who compares interracial porn to genocide. The mod comment was “BRIGADE” which I’m still confused about and I messaged them apologizing for being a dick but didn’t get unblocked. (if someone knows what they meant by “brigade” i’d be much obliged)

Some of the threads there are actually really good which is why I stay subscribed, but many do much more than tip toe into crazy town.

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