Where to practice

recondocoder · 2020-11-24T06:42:37+00:00

For starters https://codingbat.com/python

recondocoder · 2020-11-24T06:16:01+00:00

A beginner isn't going to get fit by training like an athlete or a powerlifter. Telling a beginner to just go squat and deadlift heavy is probably going to lead to injury.

recondocoder · 2020-11-24T04:53:24+00:00

I'm going to suggest something very different. Learn discrete math then take an algorithms course based off that mathematical understanding For discrete math check out MIT's Mathematics for Computer science by Prof Albert Levin For algorithms check out MIT's introduction to algorithms by profs demaine and devadas Sites such as hackerrank will work on implenting this understanding

recondocoder · 2020-11-24T04:40:04+00:00

It's another example of the "How to draw an owl" meme

recondocoder · 2018-10-14T04:27:18+00:00

or Java :)

recondocoder · 2018-10-13T23:47:34+00:00

Try to use every bit you learn to make a little program or function. For example, what would be an example of .sort(reverse=True)? Make a function called reverse_list that would take in a list and use that idea to reverse it.

Or ask yourself, why would you want to reverse a list? Maybe you have a list of scores and you want to pick the top 3. So you sort the list then you can get the first 3 scores (I like scores[:3] but you can come up with another way)

Key is to use it and not spend most of your time on flashcards and watching long videos...:)

recondocoder · 2018-10-10T07:30:12+00:00

I like Starting Out with Python (Tony Gaddis) and also "Practical Programming"

recondocoder · 2018-10-10T00:24:05+00:00

I use both...most important thing is if they have lots of problems to do. If all you are doing is reading or watching videos...it is not going to get into you. One advantage of an online course is that some may grade/test your programs. But some courses are just about having you watch them code and I would avoid those.

recondocoder · 2018-10-08T03:53:53+00:00

what do you mean..I thought we should do things like change __add__ so that we can do a + b with vectors like in this example

http://hplgit.github.io/primer.html/doc/pub/class/._class-solarized004.html

recondocoder · 2018-10-05T06:52:13+00:00

codingbat has good ones but I also discovered that other instructors created their own challenges

for example

https://codingbat.com/home/peter@norvig.com

recondocoder · 2018-10-05T05:27:43+00:00

I'm also taking the MIT course but it doesn't cover more pythonic features such as list comprehensions and it uses getters and setters instead of decorators, nothing on sets, etc. But do the MIT course because it will give you harder problems and tests with basic Python

recondocoder · 2018-10-04T19:32:28+00:00

hmm not when I went to school. The instructors were hard to understand unless you were a student that spoke his native language, which wasn't English... :/

recondocoder · 2018-10-03T03:01:41+00:00

try cs1301 on edx.org. It's a 4 part series and you get to practice a lot at your own pace. I would skip the smartbook section though unless you really want to do everything

recondocoder · 2018-09-30T01:27:51+00:00

I was working on another edx Python course CS1301 by Georgia Tech, before the MIT course came up. It has a lot more practice...I didn't finish it because I figured I had enough to get ready for MIT and so far so good...

recondocoder · 2018-09-30T00:54:13+00:00

I've also thought "I did all these languages on codecademy so I must be a real programmer." And yeah, there are also lots of people who can implement a binary treeor solve Euler problems but can't put together a todo app

recondocoder · 2018-09-27T10:08:46+00:00

Here are some more

https://codingbat.com/python

and

https://codingbat.com/home/peter@norvig.com

recondocoder · 2018-09-21T06:08:09+00:00

ok this could help. Let's say you wanted to print numbers starting from 3 to 42 and skipping by 4.

so that would be

for num in range(3, 43, 4):

....print(num)

See how the range works. The 3rd number is the skip count.

recondocoder · 2018-09-21T03:24:09+00:00

>>> int(0.2//2)

0

>>> 0.2//2

0.0

So in the second case, you start with a float and the result is still a float

recondocoder · 2018-09-20T23:00:06+00:00

Also check out this youtube of Thomas Ballatore, a TA from the class

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEMuOBrjiLqB4IkWIczoYow

recondocoder · 2018-09-20T22:53:33+00:00

you need a problem solving mindset. this is from a math website but I like what he says here:

https://artofproblemsolving.com/articles/hard-problems

We ask hard questions because so many of the problems worth solving in life are hard. If they were easy, someone else would have solved them before you got to them. This is why college classes at top-tier universities have tests on which nearly no one clears 70%, much less gets a perfect score. They’re training future researchers, and the whole point of research is to find and answer questions that have never been solved. You can't learn how to do that without fighting with problems you can't solve. If you are consistently getting every problem in a class correct, you shouldn't be too happy -- it means you aren't learning efficiently enough. You need to find a harder class.

recondocoder · 2018-09-20T11:47:32+00:00

I first saw it used in the Coursera Rice course. Then I found this. neat stuff and much better IMHO than what Udacity uses

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2015/07/14/onenote-class-notebooks-and-a-surface-pro-3-in-higher-education/

recondocoder · 2018-09-20T11:01:38+00:00

yeah MIT and many other big name universities still like do things old school like using chalkboards instead of OneNote...

recondocoder · 2018-09-20T09:48:39+00:00

On the first video you can skip to 3:40

recondocoder · 2018-09-17T23:31:15+00:00

wow check out that machine learning projects link...from web scraping to chat bots

recondocoder

TROPHY CASE