Days 6-10: Code with Benny
Hey there! If you're new, welcome to Days 6-10 of my 100 days of coding challenge! Glad you're here 🙂
If you want to see Days 0-5, head over here.
If you're curious what this is all about, check out my Introduction to Code with Benny.
What I've done so far:
Check out my last post: Days 0-5
- Completed Days 0-44 of Replit's 100 Days of Python course
- Learned a variety of skills (variables, math functions, for/while/while true loops, libraries, subroutines, lists and 2D lists)
- Started posting regularly on my twitter, including a daily log for the 100 days of coding challenge, and several threads (1, 2, 3)
Things are in full swing, and I'm excited to keep going!
Day 6 (March 19th, 2023)
What I covered/did
Days 45-47 of the Replit course I linked below!
- Created the infamous to-do list (generally everyone's first substantial project). Pretty easy actually - 4 functions (add, view, edit, remove), create subroutine for each, and then create a menu within a While True loop to call each one
- 2D Dictionaries
- Found out that random.choice() cannot work with dictionaries! little bit of investigative journalism on my part :)
Resources I used
Thoughts
Sometimes I worry I'm going a bit too fast through these lessons and should skip less of the projects to get the reps in, but my thinking is that the only value I gain from doing the projects is memorizing more of the syntax/rules. I'm still reviewing the Replit code to understand what was done, and then down the line I can always remind myself of the how to write the things I want to write.
I might be wrong though - we'll see :)
Day 7
What I covered/did
Days 48-49 of the Replit course linked below!
- Saving, writing to, and reading from files
Resources I used
Thoughts
Busy week - Balinese New Year ("Nyepi") is Wednesday, which means the whole island is shutting down. The internet, data networks, and even the airport will all be shut off for 24 hours. Then, Thursday through Sunday, I'll be at a Vipassana meditation retreat.
All this to say - I'm in frontloading mode (again). Working through loads of content the next 48 hours in preparation for what's coming up on the calendar, but am excited to get through a ton of coding content.
I was anxious before starting about whether I would enjoy learning this, but I think that's being partially resolved by just doing it. I think people tend to be drawn to what they're good at, and I'm getting the material (even if it is still quite simple) down relatively quickly, which feels good.
Day 8
What I covered/did
Days 50-51 of the Replit course linked below!
- Practice writing/open/saving/loading from files
- eval() function in the context of running text from a file
- Using loops to create "auto-save" and "auto-load" from files functions
Resources I used
Thoughts
Been a busy day: the island is shutting down in preparation for Balinese New Year, so I have been busy prepping myself as well for tomorrow (where all services won't be working).
I think this 100 days of coding challenge is an exercise in balance between routine and spontaneity. The biggest challenge when it comes to consistency for me has always been a result of an internal battle between two competing approaches to life: 1) being spontaneous and taking advantage of seizing the day when opportunity presents itself, while 2) maintaining discipline around routines and knowing when to say no.
Fundamentally, there is no secret sauce/perfect answer to when to say no in a given situation - like if a group of friends invites you to go on an amazing hiking trip despite you needing to get some work done that day.
What it comes down to, like most things in life, is maintaining awareness of when you're leaning too hard in one direction, and then adjusting course often as needed. Right now (as in, the past few days), I have been leaning too hard socially to the detriment of some of the routines I have been building. So I need to adjust course and focus much more on routine next week. That's the plan.
That's all for today :)
Day 9
What I covered/did
Days 52-53 of the Replit course linked below!
- try & except functions to catch errors
- .count() function and except/pass
Resources I used
Thoughts
Nyepi day - turns out they don't shut off the wifi. Able to get some work done from the outdoor common area of the hostel I'm staying at today.
Try/except seems quite useful. Apparently it's not a best coding practice to use pass with except, which essentially is telling the computer to not worry about doing anything with any errors found (e.g. printing/telling you).
Day 10
What I covered/did
Day 54 of the Replit course linked below!
- Manipulating CSV files (opening, reading from, and performing operations on them)
- join() function for combining lists
Resources I used
Thoughts
Rounding out Day 10! Still working through balancing routine vs spontaneity, especially ahead of some new travel plans that have come together as of today. I'm doing a visa run to Thailand/Cambodia in mid-April for a couple of weeks, and during that trip I imagine the challenge will be in finding a balance between traveling while still carving out time to focus on this coding challenge. I will keep you posted on how I end up doing that, but for now, I'm pursuing a strategy that is slightly cheating - essentially frontloading work for days that I know I won't be able to get to code on.
For example, this weekend, I'm heading to a Vipassana meditation retreat. For those not familiar, it's a silent retreat, which means no talking to anyone else, no electronics, no writing, no reading. It's a bit intense, but the implication is that I definitely will not be coding.
So, I'm doing 5 days worth of coding in the next 2 in preparation for it, and will spread that work out over Days 11-13. This may be cheating a bit, but I want to make sure that the work is getting done regardless, as the key point to this challenge is consistency as much as possible.
Anyways - that's all for the first 10 days of my challenge. 10% of the way there, and loving it so far :) It's pretty awesome how quickly you can make progress when learning to code. Despite not feeling like I'm moving that fast, I still have learned quite a bit (so I'm excited to see what happens when I'm re-focused on consistency and routine).
See you for the next 10!
Member discussion