About Halfway Through Intro Programming

We are hitting week 5 in the Coursera class I am taking. We just finished the pong game. I was a little disappointed that I did not seem to fix one of the scoring issues I had noted. I really thought I had it fixed, but no. Pong was quite a jump in complexity from the previous mini-projects that are due weekly. I had to scramble a bit more than usual to finish the work.

Python is a fine little language, but I still prefer Ruby for some reason. The Python's usage of the whitespace annoys me. But over all, they are pretty similar scripting languages. Kind of six of one... as far as I am concerned.

I think most of the value for me has been in the UI bits of the class, especially the animation. It isn't something that really comes up when one is trying to, say, find the number of politicians in a data set without an end date to their terms in office, or the number of entities that are typed as people and organizations :) Just generate a list and Bob's your uncle. While I like the expansion of my tool set, it isn't overly interesting enough to me to make me want to do UI or client-side programming. Good to know!

More Programming Updates

I attempted the Algorithms class on Coursera, and it was a bit too much of a reach. I think if I could have devoted more time, I could have made it work. However, with a full-time+ job and a family, it just was too much. That said, I cannot wait to be in a better position to work through the content. I bought the text, and I have all of the class lectures and assignments. My plan is to circle back, maybe late in the year.

Instead, I started on the three courses from Rice offered on Coursera. The beginning one is fairly easily. I probably could have skipped it, but I had concerns there might be something I would miss, *and* the class projects are all game based: Paper, Scissor, Rock, Lizard, Spock was the first. At some point we'll do Pong.

The other classes cover a Principles of Computing course, and then an Algorithmic Thinking course. Those are the two I am really looking forward to, since that is where I feel like my skill set is currently needing help.

I am still mulling my own kinds of projects that will be a solid demonstration of skills. I am also a bit nervous about the whole idea of changing careers, and wondering if I am just playing some massive joke on myself :) For the most part, though, I concentrate on the steps before me, rather than the mountain looming.