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

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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.)