What You Have To Do !!

Rules to Follow

Pledge that you will work for at least an hour on Python programming for 100 days!
- I will keep myself accountable and make this a priority
- I will achieve my goal
- I will be a Python Developer
- I will believe in myself

The more you learn to code - the better you will get - like going to the gym regularly
We as humans have a lot of INERTIA (a property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless that state is changed by an external force). But once STARTED it was easy to carry on (like studying).
To start something and get over the inertia, say we will do something "only for 20min" - The brain sees this 20min as easy and not a lot of effort.
Next - we need to do this always, ie create a HABIT !
- To continue this habit is like seeing 5 paintings - 4 of them are dead straight but the fifth is crooked. You have a tendency to want to keep the line straight and fix the painting. Same as in starting a habit, Think of a task in the calendar and running a straight line (in big thick red ink) through each day - you don't want to miss a day as you want to keep the straight line going!!

If you are going to learn something for the sake of learning it, it will be difficult to continue. You WANT to learn to do something for an end goal. With coding, follow a tutorial that makes something of use that you will learn from - not just copy and paste code !!
I'm doing this for robotics, and electronics (starting off with my own sprinkler system with Email/SMS/WhatsApp notifications, history, - basically a fully functional weather station for my home)

The key to learning is all about ramping. You want to be stretched over and over again and for knowledge be built on previous knowledge. Make sure its not to steep (you'll get lost) or too shallow (you get bored)
Imposter syndrome (the opposite of Dunning-Kruger effect). Programmers and Network Engineers are purportedly the profession that has the largest population of Imposter Syndrome where people feel like they are frauds and underestimate their own skills and abilities
The skills to have are to be able to ask good questions and understanding the answer

Make your own notepad, MSPaint, Tetris etc. There is a lot of help out there on older stuff - if you are working on new stuff and brand new to the world - no one will be able to help you with.

Be accountable to someone - Show your work. With all these online courses, no one cares if you finish your course or not. Think back to school days when you had to hand in your work - you wouldn't have worked till 2:00am to finish if there was no accountability.
So - get a study buddy (Meetup's etc) or set an exam date to get a qualification to go with your study!!
Submit code to Python Tutor (email: tutor@python.org)
Only what's measured can be improved.

Step away from your code when you are struggling with debugging code as a distraction helps the brain to come up with a solution

There are programming related Meet-ups happening in almost every city in the world. Go to www.meetup.com and find one related to a language you’re trying to learn.
Attend the meet ups, get to know people. Exchange your expertise for their expertise. Maybe someone needs an accountant, maybe someone needs legal advice.
Exchange your time for their time. Don’t say to someone, “will you be my mentor?”. No one wants to throw away their free time for some stranger. Instead, offer your help in return for their help and you’ll be successful in finding a mentor 95% of the time

Chunking - The art of breaking down your programming problem into solvable chunks. The simpler the chunk, the easier it is to tackle

Understand how to to get help
On a site like StackOverflow, its tempting to cut and paste - but that doesn't teach you anything, because the next time you have the same problem but in a diferent scenario - You're stuck!!
There is a rule in coding "Never copy/paste code code you don't understand"
What do you do if you are confronted with code that solves your problem but have no clue how it works? Break it down.
- Step1-Copy/Paste the code into your program (yes, violates above rule, but patience my friend)
- Step2-Make sure your prgrame or app is functioning as expected
- Step3-Delete the pasted code line by line
- Step4-Each time a line is deleted, check to see what's broken. Does the app work?
- Step5-Even if you think what the line of code does, delete it anyway and check what's broken
- Step6-Swap some of the lines around. Can same functionality be achieved? Why were they written in those order

Last updated 1 year ago

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