Ruby on Rails Tutorial by Michael Hartl

Finished chapter 2 of Ruby on Rails Tutorial by Michael Hartl.

It's so hard to find time to concentrate uninterrupted, especially time at my computer, with working internet. For example, I can't do it while gulping my dinner in a taqueria. Or when there are chatty people around to whom I must not be too cold or rude.

I can read paper books, even when not at a quiet desk. I have scraps of time while waiting at the kid's orthodontist, eating breakfast, etc. But paper books are expensive.

Just finished this one: Introducing GitHub: A Non-Technical Guide. By Peter Bell, Brent Beer. O'Reilly Media.  Final Release Date: November 2014. It's humiliating to have to start with the "non-technical" one. And to still feel ignorant at the end. But, a little bit less so.

Ruby on Rails Tutorial by Michael Hartl

Finished chapter 1 (of 12). Hard but fun.

Ruby on Rails Tutorial by Michael Hartl

New baby GitHub account

Getting board/frustrated with the Unity book. (69% complete). Have I gotten what I needed to get from it (ie, some experience messing around in an a object-oriented environment), or should I persevere and finish, since I started? In a fit of restlessness, began the Railstutorial.org book before finishing the Unity one.

(Is it true I don't yet have a GitHub account? Didn't I create one at that Open Source event? Apparently not...) (Oo, Hartl tutorial has me setting up a Cloud9 IDE account too... pretty! At least I know what an IDE is now. Progess since this summer :P   )

Profoundly distracted by the Ferguson protests.

Code School "Try Git"

Completed today. Not super enlightening. Cat is cute tho.

Hour of Code - one year later

Hour of Code approacheth. One year later.

What has changed in one year?

I have completed introductory classes in: HTML/CSS/Javascript; Python (several); Unity Game Engine (63% as of today). I am itching to be done with the Unity course so I can tackle the Michael Hartl Ruby on Rails one.

Object Oriented Programming concepts are no longer totally alien.

I have moved from feeling proud of myself for sticking a toe in the water, to feeling very impatient and frustrated that I still don't really know how to just jump in and swim.

I have joined a lot of new email lists and have a different set of voices flowing across my screen: O'Reilly, Gamasutra, Women Who Code. I got my Hour of Code reminders from GeekMom this year. I learned about new holidays, like Ada Lovelace Day.

I thought about organizing an Hour of Code event at the kid's computer club place this year-- but did not.

Unity with Ryan Henson Creighton: 57%

OK, the code in this chapter did not work.

And I fixed it.

Even though I do not know much about the Unity engine, or UnityScript, I apparently do know how to debug, slowly, methodically: is this part working? Yes? How about this part? No? Debug.Log(), Debug.Log()... And I do know how to muck slowly through incomprehensible script reference manuals describing objects and classes and variables I know nothing about, until I find what I need.

I still don't know why his code didn't work. He said to "tag" something using Unity, and I did, and the Unity interface says it is successfully "tagged", but the script does not see the "tag". Some kind of Unity bug I guess.

I'm sure there are multiple fixes/workarounds. But I found one of them :)

Re-inspired

Got the idea of looking for a UCBerkeley equivalent of MIT Open Courseware. Found EdX Berkeley. Then... found a course with a list of prerequisites that I actually understood! Maybe there's a "Level Two" for me in the world! Plus it even seems to cover something like the "web stack" topic I was planning to try next.

EdX UC-BerkeleyX Engineering Software as a Service CS169.1x
CS169.1x teaches the fundamentals for engineering long-lasting software using highly-productive Agile techniques to develop Software as a Service (SaaS) using Ruby on Rails. Students will understand the new challenges and opportunities of SaaS versus shrink-wrapped software. They will understand and apply fundamental programming techniques to the design, development, testing, and public cloud deployment of a simple SaaS application. Students will use best-of-breed tools that support modern development techniques including behavior-driven design, user stories, test-driven development, velocity, and pair programming. Students will learn how modern programming language features like metaprogramming and reflection can improve productivity and code maintainability. Prerequisites: Programming proficiency in an object-oriented programming language such as Java, C#, C++, Python, or Ruby is required. We will teach the basics of Ruby at a very accelerated pace that assumes thorough familiarity with OOP inheritance, static/class vs. instance methods and attributes, recursion, hash tables/hash maps, list comprehensions, higher-order functions, lambda expressions. This course is NOT a good first course in programming. Basic Unix command-line skills are helpful. Familiarity with Git, GitHub and Heroku will also be helpful. 6-12 hours/week, Oct 21-Dec 9, 2014. (CS169.2x: Engineering Software as a Service, Part 2, begins Jan 6, 2015.) 

"Profiiciency" is too strong a word, but at least I understand most of what the "prerequisite" words refer to. (I do NOT (yet!) understand what most of the course description words refer to. :P)

Alas the timing is wrong: the course started a few weeks ago (Oct 21), and I haven't finished my Unity course yet. (Currently at 42%)

While looking at the course webpage, I saw a student review that recommended "Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial" before starting the course. I looked it up, found out it is a book available online, read the first few sections, and loved it. So I can do a virtual (by which I mean offline, LOL) version of the course using this book, and now I have something to read over lunch again.

I Googled "Python Django vs Ruby Rails" and decided I am probably more of a Python type. But, no harm in learning a bit of Ruby syntax at this stage.

Frustrated by slowness

Unity book: now 40% done. 

Goaded by WWWCode Newsletter link to Bloc bootcamp website, feeling frustrated by my slow pace of learning. So hard to steal quiet, concentrated time at the computer...

From the WWWCode Newsletter/ Bloc website:

• Bloc Course Directors Share Their Favorite 10 Pre-Bootcamp Tutorials. The page is still frustratingly hard to read, full of references to things I have not only not mastered, but am not even familiar with. :P
• Bloc's Programming Bootcamp Comparison - "Navigating the Coding Ecosystem: Compare Price, Length, and Workload of Learn-to-Code Courses." Includes a description of coding student types, by category:

  • THE HOBBYIST
    “I’m new to coding. I want to learn how to build my own app, on my own time.”
    
    • holding an irregular schedule
    • unsure if coding is the right fit for you
    • learning to code just as a hobby
    TRY A SELF PACED, OR LOW INTENSITY COURSE, like Codecademy. Maybe 5-10 hours/week, or less.
  
  
  • THE PROFESSIONAL
    “I work in a tech industry. I want to learn how to code like a professional.”
    
    • have a full time job
    • a busy life, with not too much free time (kids, family)
    • or a familiarity with coding, but no experience
    TRY A PART TIME, MID INTENSITY COURSE, like Udacity. 20 hours/week, or less.
  
  
  • THE JOB SEEKER
    “I’m making a complete career change. I want to be a professional developer.”
    
    • looking to make a complete career change
    • ready to make learning to code your full-time job
    • frustrated that past efforts learning to code failed
    TRY A FULL TIME, INTENSIVE COURSE. A bootcamp, like Bloc. 40-90 hours/week, over 12 weeks or so.
    
  
  
  • [We at Bloc]... calculated how much time it would take to reach a minimum of 500 hours of experience — a decent chunk of the 10,000 hours required to master a skill...

I guess I should be glad to see "my type" on the list at all. But I feel frustrated that it's under "hobbyist"... even though that is entirely accurate.

Mozilla Webmaker

Mozilla Webmaker Web Literacy Map
https://webmaker.org/en-US/literacy

Got an email today from "MozFest." Am chagrined to realize I don't understand the vocabulary well enough to read it and understand what they are talking about. But after poking around on the links for a while, I think I may add Mozilla Webmaker to my list of possible next steps on my curriculum of exploration. (Next steps meaning after I finish my current "unit" on game design, embodied by the Unity textbook.) They have a Web Literacy Map that includes topics like "Understanding the Internet Stack" -- seems like some of the same areas of knowledge that "coder boot camps" (Hackbright, etc) cover, and which I am still missing.

Unity with Ryan: 26%

Unity 4.x Game Development by Example Beginner's Guide, by Ryan Henson Creighton.

One hour work session today. Did pages "23%" through "26%" (Does it make sense to note page numbers in Kindle? p 137 of 533, ch 4 of  14...). Built a bouncy ball thing. Giggled.

(I'll admit it: I bought this book because of the shoot-y noise on the cover.)

Saturday, Nov 8: 
Worked to 31%. Still fun. And still good for the other reason I chose Unity for my current "class" -- provides practice on object-oriented proramming and Javascript, in context of a larger project or system.

Game Design

Maybe a little off track for "coding", but since last weekend I've been really enjoying learning a bit about the world of "game design."

• MIT Open Courseware CMS.608 / CMS.864 "Game Design" with Phillip B. Tan - am listening to lectures despite poor sound quality that reduces the contexts in which I can successfully follow. Currently on lecture 9 of 33. Would be fun to do all the related reading and exercises too... but no time.
• Challenges for Game Designers: Non-Digital Exercises for Video Game Designers by Brenda Brathwaite and Ian Schreiber - reading this because it is listed as a text for MIT OCW CMS 608. Tedious textbooky style, but interesting content.
• It's also mentioned in 4 Must-Have Books for Learning Game Designers by Jake Huhn
• Update, 11/22/2014: Finished reading it (though not doing the exercises.) Also subscribed to Gamasutra email list for ongoing taste of game industry talk.
• MIT Open Courseware related courses
• MIT Game Lab 
• I am severely tempted by, but don't think I have time for, edX MITx: 11.126x Introduction to Game Design, happening right now (Oct 22-Dec 3), again with Philip Tan... sigh. The archived lectures are all I can do, I think.
• Utopian Entrepreneur by Brenda Laurel (MIT Press) - I love this woman. She's my new bisexual superhero.
• Unity 4.x Game Development by Example Beginner's Guide, by Ryan Henson Creighton - my current "textbook", on the theory that it's useful to see things that can be done with code. Trying to actually do the exercises in this one, "get my hands dirty," instead of only reading. I love the humor of the author. And there is something inherently fun about Unity 3D.
• Twitter is emailing me interesting-looking things to "Follow", more than I can record here.
• Coursera "Video Games and Learning" Oct 3 - Nov 13, 2014, from U. of Wisconsin

The Queerness and Games Conference

Stepped off my beaten path today and spent a few hours at The Queerness and Games Conference (QGCon2014) at UC Berkeley. Fun! Was very inspired by keynote speaker Brenda Laurel.

In the morning I went back and attended a game design workshop led by Chelsea Howe-- very fun.

Decided to go ahead and try again to add Twitter to my life. (Last time I looked into it was 2009.)

• http://www.ted.com/speakers/brenda_laurel
• http://tauzero.com/Brenda_Laurel/
• http://www.qgcon.com/
• https://twitter.com/QGCon
• https://github.com/LiMina/adjective-animal/blob/master/qgcon-notes.txt

Finished Codecademy "Javascript"

Finished the Codecademy Javascript course.

One month to finish "10 hour" course. Sigh. Hard to find the scraps of time.

Progress: having now finished yet another "intro to programming" course, I do feel like the initial "culture shock"/new job/steep learning curve pains of being flooded by new vocabulary and concepts is past. I still lack practice and experience, but I am now at least oriented. I have survived this far :)

I think my next project will be to play with the Unity game engine for a while, using Unity 4.x Game Development by Example Beginner's Guide by Ryan Henson Creighton. (I've now read 25% of the book on Kindle, but am still severely lacking in "getting my hands dirty" experience, due to lack of time available to actually sit at a machine and concentrate for longer than a few minutes at once.)

Gender wave

A small wave of articles and conversations on the topic of sexism in computing came through this week. I think it started with the burst of facebook disgust at Mr. Nadella's remarks on women asking for raises at the Grace Hopper conference...

• "... Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had some retro advice for women attending the Grace Hopper Celebration on Thursday [Oct 9] ..."
• And publicity around Walter Isaacson's new book The Innovators triggered commentaries surrounding Ada Lovelace:
• The Forgotten Female Programmers Who Created Modern Tech, by Laura Sydell, NPR, October 06, 2014
• When Women Stopped Coding, NPR, October 21
• Plus a Ada Lovelace Day event, October 15 at Thoughtworks
• "GamerGate" --
  • Moral Combat article (10/15/2014) in the East Bay Express featuring an upcoming "Queerness and Games Conference - QGCon" at UC Berkeley: "After enduring a vicious harassment campaign designed to chase women out of the video game industry, local female developers are trying to take back the art form from commercialization."
  • [Twine article in New York Times 10/23/2014, sent to me by my sister.]
• A group of programmer friends at a cafe Oct 21 talked about it and circulated this 2011 Stanford article on how “Computer Geeks” replaced “Computer Girls”

Interesting...

Inching update

Inching onward -- update:

• Codecademy Javascript: 65% complete
• MIT textbook (Introduction to Computation and Programming by John Guttag) on Kindle: 100% read
• MIT CS6.00 lecture series (Introduction to Computer Science and Programming by Prof. John Guttag) : 22 of 25 lectures listened to.
• MIT CMS.611J / 6.073J (Fall 2013) lecture series (Creating Video Games): 4 of 25 lectures listened to. (And I just belatedly found the prerequisite course: CMS.608 / CMS.864, Game Design, Fall 2010. Hm, should I back up?? These video game people seem kind of fun.) (No offense to Prof. Guttag. I like his jokes too. :)

Next Kindle book? Need something to read over lunch...

• Unity 4.x Game Development by Example Beginner's Guide by Ryan Henson Creighton, followed by 
• Creating eLearning Games with Unity by David Horachek. 
• Or, another temptation: Unity Android Game Development by Example Beginner's Guide by Thomas Finnegan.

Or maybe I should just try to start with Al Sweigart's Making Games with Python and Pygame...

DOS extenders, X3J11 C standard committee, and 3-D terrain display...

Feeling a bit inspired by his list of accomplishments:

https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=24798972

Inching along

Inching onward:

• Codecademy Javascript: 44% complete
• MIT textbook (Introduction to Computation and Programming by John Guttag) on Kindle: 72% read
• MIT CS6.00 lecture series (Introduction to Computer Science and Programming by Prof. John Guttag) : 18 of 25 lectures listened to

Next ambition:

• Unity 4.x Game Development by Example Beginner's Guide by Ryan Henson Creighton, followed by 
• Creating eLearning Games with Unity by David Horachek. 
• But these (or any other projects involving actually building something) will require actual working-at-a-computer time, not just reading-during-lunch time...

Unity again

Women Who Code - Unity Game Engine class again. See entry of Aug 28.

Finished Codecademy "Make An Interactive Website"

An introductory overview of using Javascript and JQuery code to add "interactivity" (drop-down menus, etc) to a website. Not deep, but another bit of orientation...

 

CyberAces

From an email thread.

Free SANS training (This is from their actual courses)  via CyberAces Online available as of September 1.http://www.cyberaces.org/direct link to the tutorials: https://tutorials.cyberaces.org/tutorials

...
FYI, my husband's in this industry, and SANS training is considered the top certs for network and information security.  If your kids are interested in security, this is where to start.

... 

Funny....my husband is too that is why he told me to let everyone know about it.  :)  It is a good field if you are interested in computer security.  Sounds like a great opportunity.  Hope it helps someone...:)

So many possible directions...

Finished Codecademy HTML & CSS

Finished Codecademy HTML & CSS today, September 2. (Finished Codecademy Python on July 30.) Next: Codecademy Javascript (with maybe a brief stop at Codecademy Make an Interactive Website for orientation. I've lost my mental block about CSS, but I still feel so out of date...)

Women Who Code - Unity Game Engine

Kid and I made the field trip into SF for an evening class by Women Who Code. Unity game engine. Tiring but fun.

(Class turned out to be Session #5 of 5. At kid's insistence, we signed up for the next round too. Session #1 of 5 on Sep 17. Once again, an exhausting late-night trek to SF with laptops strapped to our backs. But fun.)

Chipping away in odd moments alone

I've reached 66% percent complete on the Codecademy "HTML and CSS" course. Good to finally break my grumpy mental block about CSS. But Codecademy is frustratingly buggy plus often slow. Gonna look into W3Schools. (Esp if today's bug, which prevents me from accessing my current lesson at all, does not disappear soon.)

Maybe I will try W3Schools Web Building Tutorial, next time.

Women Who Code - Open Source Software

Women Who Code

Kid and I made a field trip to a Open Source event by Women Who Code SF. Mostly it was above our heads, and we were too tired to tackle it with energy, but still it was interesting. I installed Git Bash and Notepad++ on my laptop, got a sense of some Open Source volunteer opportunities, and learned some Git-related words and ideas.

Not sure what you're looking for, but you might check out some of the following if any of it interests you:

• Mozilla has an office here in San Francisco, plus their main HQ down in the South Bay -- not sure where you're coming from -- so you might check out their projects (testing, documentation, web/tutorial development...plus they have good community member development paths).  In the future, I'd love for you to meet Larissa Shapiro, who is based in the SF office and handles Community Management, but I don't think she's coming tomorrow.
• https://wiki.mozilla.org/GNOME_Outreach_Summer2014
• https://oneanddone.mozilla.org/en-US/
• Or following up on your Python, you might check out newcoder.io -- go through these tutorials & if you find any bugs, help improve their tutorials

See you tomorrow,
Katherine

--------

Other bits of notes from this event:

http://www.meetup.com/Women-Who-Code-SF/events/195850392 -

learning about the tools of open source software - http://openhatch.org/missions/
- browsing through various open source projects
- installing open source software to start using it
- installing the development environment
- downloading & building from source
- identifying issues to work on
- creating tests & patches
- working on an OPW application
- helping others do these things too!

http://newcoder.io/

Code schools / bootcamps

Photo credit: Kimberly Lin, Hackbright Summer 2014 Engineering Fellow​

Kid and I went last night to check out a Hackbright Academy graduation/ Demo Night. It was pretty inspiring-- both the overview of how the ten weeks are run, and all the cool projects the women had built in just ten weeks. (Five weeks to learn Python, five to learn everything else, plus an optional two more for industry networking and job search.)

GitHub Octocat Coder Girl

From the Hackbright website:

Here is what you will learn. Some words you may not understand when you start, but will when you finish:

• Python
• How to build a webapp
• Pair programming
• Git and source control
• Interview skills
• SQL and ORMs
• Regex
• HTML, CSS, Javascript, AJAX
• Deploying to cloud services such as Heroku or Amazon EC2
• Terminal shells, grep, and other *nix command-line fu
• Computer Science data structures such as linked lists, dictionaries, and trees
• How to work with APIs (such as Google Maps or Twitter)
• Basic networking concepts / how the internet works
• Other programming concepts and tools such as message queues, batch processing, distributed processing, NoSQL, and web sockets

Interesting student project descriptions here.

MIT Gentle Introduction, Session #11 of 11: "Questions and applications"

The end of my experiment with taking an MIT Open Courseware IAP class.

• I did it!
• It was hard
• But very fun
• I learned a lot
• Including that the logistics of carving out time, finding a desk and food, etc was harder than the actual coursework
• I want to do it again (which I think means taking some version of MIT 6.00), but I can't, at least right away: logistics. Need to return my attention to neglected household duties, etc. (But I bought myself a copy of the 6.00 John Guttag textbook as a prize for finishing 6.189)

What next?

• Reading next textbook (Guttag, John. Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python. MIT Press, 2013) in spare moments, plus Python podcasts, etc
• Trying to add networking/contextualizing events to my life, Women Who Code, GDI, study meetups, etc
• Maybe look at doing some of the HMTL/CSS/Javascript track that everyone seems to start with. HTML I know, but CSS and Javascript I have only passing acquaintance with...

Podcast fun

Found a couple of python-related podcasts. Now, with smartphone under my pillow, I can listen to python talk in my sleep :)

• LearnPython .com- Coursera professor Charles Severance (UMich) doing another python-based "computers 101" course
• (Not related to LearnPython.org - Learn Python the Hard Way, another widely used book and course)
• From Python Import Podcast - higher level geek chat
• (I wonder if I can extract MP3s from the MIT 6.00 lectures...)

MIT Gentle Introduction, Session #10 of 11: "More Review"

A Gentle Introduction to Programming Using Python 
Instructor: Sarina Canelake 
MIT Course Number: 6.189 
As Taught In: January IAP 2011

"6.189 Final Project – Tetris! The format for the final project will be as follows: You will pick a partner and work on one computer together. Make sure that you email files to each other so you each have the code you work on! Sit next to each other in lab. There will be an LA assigned to your area who will keep track of your progress and walk you through more difficult sections of the code."

I spent 7.5 hours total (scattered over four days) on the "Final Project", and completed 9 out of the 11 steps. I could not get Step 10 to work, but after a great deal of careful tracing, decided that the troubleshooting needs seemed to lie in tkinter and the supplied graphics module, not in my own struggles with learning to write object-oriented code for the first time. So, I'm deciding that getting Step 10 to work is beyond what can be reasonably expected of me as student at this level. And being an isolated Open Courseware student, I do not have a Lab Assistant to ask for help. I am declaring the Final Project to be "as done as I can make it", and giving myself a Final Project completeness score of 10.5 out of 11, or 95%.

MIT Gentle Introduction, Session #9 of 11: "Review"

Tackle: Project Two, Conway's Game of Life.

OK, that took me seven hours, over four work sessions/days. Most of that was debugging-- some very educational, as I got experience in several things that produce quirky/mysterious errors rather than simple syntax errors. Some errors produced by programming subtleties I "should know" (are lists local variables?), some produced by IDLE quirks (coughs on too many ''' comments), some by what seem to be errors in the materials provided to me (missing library import, resulting in undefined methods). But I did solve them all, step by step, and get the code working. Someday I will be better at understanding at a glance what the code someone hands to me is trying to say/do. But I am good at step by step troubleshooting, even when not having all the info/background.

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-189-a-gentle-introduction-to-programming-using-python-january-iap-2011/assignments/MIT6_189IAP11_project2.pdf

Computer science 101

Based on watching the YouTube lectures for the first class, I vote for MIT 6.00, daughter votes for Harvard CS50. Harvard has way more song and dance and cartoons and reassurance. MIT has dry lecture, chalkboards, and assumes material is inherently interesting.

MIT Gentle Introduction, Session #8 of 11: "Inheritance"

Spoke too soon. 2 hours work today (Tues), and barely got through one exercise. Did not implement even that one according to suggested method/way. Fatigue, poor concentration. External demands on my energy. :P

Weds: day "off", read some textbook, finished last bits of Codecademy Python.
Thurs: 2.5 hours, was able to finish the Homework (Homework 4): making Tetris blocks.

.

MIT Gentle Introduction, Session #7 of 11: "More about classes"

2.5 hours, done. All this object-oriented stuff (classes, inheritance, etc) is very unfamiliar and not (yet) intuitive, but the assignments are not so hard after all, so, not as scary as I thought...

MIT Gentle Introduction, Session #6 of 11: "Classes"

One hour, finished! Readings, lectures, and homework! Caffeine is an amazing substance.

MIT Gentle Introduction, Session #5 of 11: "Tuples, dictionaries, common Python mistakes"

A Gentle Introduction to Programming Using Python
Instructor: Sarina Canelake
MIT Course Number: 6.189
As Taught In: January IAP 2011

6.5 hours, spread over three days, to complete Day 5. Running out of the background reading I did in advance; moving more slowly to absorb more new material.

Encouragement and ideas

Hello, Thanks for your interest in the Code School learning opportunity sponsored by Women Techmakers. There has been a high demand for our limited number of Code School codes, and unfortunately we are unable to allocate one for you. However, we encourage you to explore Code School for two free days with their Hall Pass initiative. We also recommend the free resources below from some of our favorite online learning resources. All of these resources are free, self-paced, and are great for all levels of experience. Code School Dig into JavaScript Road Trip Part 1 and Try jQuery along the JavaScript Path. When combined with Shaping up with Angular.js, you’ll have a solid start in understanding one of the most commonly used languages. Learn off the beaten path with fun electives Try Git, Discover DevTools, andDiscover Drive. Udacity Try the CS101 and Programming Foundations with Python (OOP) courses. In CS101 you will learn to build your own search engine or social network, and in OOP you will make mini projects that spread happiness online. Both of these courses will help you build a strong foundation in coding. Jump start your interest in CSS and HTML with Make Your Own 2048. This course will empower you to build really cool things with coding, even if you’ve never coded before. And of course check out Google’s offerings with Udacity covering Android, Cloud, and Web Development courses. This Fall, Udacity will also be launching Nanodegrees - credentials built and recognized by industry leaders to advance your career. You will be able to select credentials for Front-End Web Developer, Back-End Web Developer, iOS Developer, and Data Analyst. Stay tuned to Udacity for more information. Khan Academy Take-on Intro to JS: Drawing and Animation to learn JavaScript, the most popular programming language in the world. You will work with the ProcessingJS library to make drawings, animations, stories, and games. Once you’ve completed this course make sure to check out the What to Learn Nextpage. Google Watch our DevBytes, Compressor Head, and other great learning series’ on theGoogle Developers YouTube channel. Produced by the Google Developers team, you’ll find segments are produced regularly on topics that are relevant to Google and hot in the industry. We also encourage you to join online and offline communities that can help you practice the skills you’ve learned, and will provide a supportive community while you pursue your areas of interest: Google Developer Groups - In-person, local meetups for developers who are interested in Google’s developer technologies like Android, Google Cloud Platform, Chrome/HTML5, Google Maps API, and more. (533 chapters across 103 countries). Women Techmakers - Inspiration, community, and collaboration for women making an impact through technology. Girl Develop It - Empowering women of diverse backgrounds from around the world to learn how to develop software (29 chapters across North America). Women Who Code -  Is a global non-profit dedicated to inspiring women to excel in technology careers (41 chapters across 13 countries). Pyladies - A group of women developers worldwide who love the Python programming language (27 chapters across 12 countries). Thank you again for your interest in learning with Google, -The Women Techmakers team

© 2014 Google Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 You're receiving this one-time communication in response to your application for the Code School Learning Opportunity from Google.

Daydreaming about next steps or other places

One next step might be to take a real, semester-long "Computer Science 101" course.

• Harvard CS50 - several internet reviewers seem to like this one. They have a lot of videos on YouTube.
• Udacity CS101 - no, this costs money.
• MIT
• 6.00SC 
• 2014 6.00.1.x
• 2011 OCW Scholar
• 2008
• Games for Social Change - kind of random but interesting.
• Coursera/Stanford CS101 - although this one seems more "liberal arts" than "learn to program"?
• UCBerkeley - doesn't seem to offer a "101" course, but does have this one.

Alternately, drop down to Hour of Code and/or Codecademy, mess around for a while... There seems to be a sort of "track", different from the computer-science-theory kind of course, which goes: HMTL, CSS, Javascript... then PHP, Ruby, Python... more practical? Or more entry-level.

• Khan Academy (Javascript)
• PairUp to Code - incl GDI meeting on Sat mornings
• w3schools maybe gives the best map of this "track"

A third "track" is sort of "misc other" -- especially, mobile apps, game design, robots...

Ideally, find a project to actually work on, GitHub etc... alas those things are still unreadable to me. But perhaps help is available:

• Women Who Code - Open Source panel

MIT Gentle Introduction, Session #4 of 11: "Strings, lists, list comprehensions"

A Gentle Introduction to Programming Using Python
Instructor: Sarina Canelake
MIT Course Number: 6.189
As Taught In: January IAP 2011

3.5 hours total. (Of which 30 mins reading lecture notes, 1 hour on homework, 2 hours on Hangman project.) Over the course of three days.

Session Four homework is Homework set 2, exercises 2.7-2.10, plus two optional problems. Was able to finish in one hour. Except I skipped one exercise because it was about how to implement certain kinds of math (above my head). Also I didn't do the optional exercises, because I am a rusty old lady, not top of the entering class, and am just trying to keep my head above water for now.
Session Four also includes a "Project" (hangman game) in addition to the "Homework." 

virtual teacher

MIT Gentle Introduction, Session #3 of 11: "Defining functions"

Sarina and Percy, Dec 2012

A Gentle Introduction to Programming Using Python
Instructor: Sarina Canelake
MIT Course Number: 6.189
As Taught In: January IAP 2011

Session Three: 3.5 hours (completed over four days)

Fri: two hours

30 mins for some readings (that I had not done in advance)
1.5 hours for Homework 2, problems 2.0-2.5. But actually skipped 2.3 and 2.5 due to math issues.

Sat: one hour
Mon: 20 mins
Homework 2, problem 2.6, and Written Exercises (2.11, 2.12)

MIT Gentle Introduction, Session #2 of 11: "Conditionals, loops"

Day two: 2.5 hours

Not much "lecture" material. Have already done the reading.
Homework 1, Exercises 1.6-1.8 and Written Exercises 1.12-1.15.
30 mins Weds (kid had no camp) -- did some paper-shuffling
1 hour Thurs -- did 1.6 and 1.12-1.15.
Another 30 mins Thurs -- did 1.7. Hey, that was almost a real program! A step into Making rather than just studying!
Another 30 mins Thurs -- I'm out of time, gotta pick kid up from camp. But I finished! (Not counting the optional extra exercises.) And I wrote four little programs, and had fun doing the Making! (I've been a little worried about what might happen the day I finally actually put my hands to the clay rather than just reading about it...)

MIT Gentle Introduction, Session #1 of 11: "Introduction"

I decided to count today as my official Day One.

Read Lecture Session #1. Exercise at the end proves I am not a real MIT student: I don't understand question #4. "Positive Root"? "Recall"? Oh well, ploughing on.

Use IDLE to calculate:
1. 6+4*10
2. (6+4)*10 (Compare this to #1, and note that Python uses parentheses just like you would in normal math to
determine order of operations!)
3. 23.0 to the 5th power
4. Positive root of the following equation:
34*x^2 + 68*x - 510
Recall:
a*x^2 + b*x + c
x1 = ( - b + sqrt ( b*b - 4*a*c ) ) / ( 2*a) 

Was able to finish all (well, most) materials for Session #1 in about 1.5 hours (not counting the reading, which I did last week.)

A Gentle Introduction to Programming Using Python
Instructor: Sarina Canelake
MIT Course Number: 6.189
As Taught In: January IAP 2011

Monday morning update. Today is the day I am supposed to start the MIT class, according to my summer plan.

Codecademy Python: 91% done. [Finished the last 9% on 7/30/2014]

Think Python book: have read chapters 1-8 of 19 (but not done the exercises).

Set up this blog/log/journal today. Added backdated entries to try my "learn to program" efforts, based on notes in my journal, email reports sent to friends, etc.

Getting ready to try using MIT Open Courseware, (A Gentle Introduction, course #6.189, as taught in Jan 2011):

• Calendar - 11 sessions total
• Lectures
• Assignments

Session 1 wants me to be install Python and get the IDLE shell running. I seem to have a Python (v.3.4.1) window, but it doesn't seem to be IDLE -- no command menu at top. Sigh... will try re-installing, and researching... digging around in Windows lib directory... OK, yay, I've got IDLE!

Wikipedia trivia:

IDLE is an Integrated DeveLopment Environment for Python, which has been bundled with the default implementation of the language since 1.5.2b1.^[1][2] It is packaged as an optional part of the Python packaging with many Linux distributions. It is completely written in Python and the Tkinter GUI toolkit (wrapper functions for Tcl/Tk). ... IDLE is intended to be a simple IDE and suitable for beginners, especially in an educational environment. 

10 Secrets You Should Have Learned with Your Software Engineering Degree – But Probably Didn’t

67% complete in Codecademy Python course.

Reading:
Think Python: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist, by Allen B. Downey
aka Python for Software Design: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist, by Allen B. Downey
aka How to Think Like a Computer Scientist, by Allen B. Downey

http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/

  

I am only 41% through the Codecademy Python course ("13 hours"), which means I may barely finish Python in this three-week slot (during which I had hoped to finish their full website: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, Python, Ruby, plus practice Web Projects and APIs.)

summer programming plan

OK, I've read a few books, looked around some, and now this is my current summer learn-to-program plan:

June 23-July 7 (while kid has no camps): 

try to complete all Codecademy modules. Starting in the middle, with Python (13 hours, they say), then back to the beginning with HTML and all their other modules.

http://www.codecademy.com/

July 14 - Aug 1 (while kid is in camp): work through the MIT Open Courseware three-week module on Intro to Programming with Python, 

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-189-a-gentle-introduction-to-programming-using-python-january-iap-2011/index.htm

which based on the textbook How to Think Like a Computer Scientist:

http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/

Do-able? Don't know. But it's a plan...

:)

Today I heard a cheery woman on NPR's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" introduce herself as an MIT research engineer. She sounded very happy.

"There was no going back to coal mining for me anymore."

http://www.quora.com/Career-Advice/Im-about-to-quit-my-job-to-learn-to-program-What-should-I-do

   http://inventwithpython.com/

Learning Web Design, 4th Edition

A Beginner's Guide to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Web Graphics

By Jennifer Niederst Robbins

Publisher: O'Reilly Media

Final Release Date: August 2012

Pages: 624 http://inventwithpython.com/