Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Udacity CS 101 Lesson 1 of 11

Well that took a while but lesson 1 is done, only 10 more to go :-) The course is supposed to take 7 weeks but we'll see. Here's the link to my Udacity Github Repo Udacity-CS-101 if you want to clone the repo and  run it on your local machine. The purpose of the repo is just for me to document what I'm doing and to keep honest with completing all of the assignments.

The course is done in Python, but I really want to learn Ruby so I'm doing everything twice, once in Python and once in Ruby. Already I've noticed some differences between Ruby and Python the biggest difference so far has been indentation. When I am using Haml I am SUPER careful on how I nest and indent elements, but in Ruby I guess I'm a little sloppy or just don't think about it.

I had 4 errors while doing the exercises in Lesson 1 and I looked through my code I couldn't find anything wrong. Then I realized I had one more space in front of one of the lines of Python. It's funny how you don't think about that when using Ruby.

I was going to go on and do another Udacity course after this one, but after looking around, I think I will take either one of these 2 courses here: Stanford CS 101 or Harvardx-cs50x . I really am enjoying the slow no pressure pace of the current course, and I just am thinking to myself that Stanford is the number CS school in the world at least according to the Huffingtonpost: best university computer science.

Who am I trying to impress? Why not take my time and get a really good solid computer science foundation by taking a couple different CS 101 courses, especially considering they are free. As long as I am learning new things everyday, and am able to take care of my family I'm a happy camper.

One day (many years from now) I want to be the Michael Jordan of software development. Today I had a small taste of what it would be like to REALLY  have an advanced skill set. I was able to use an advanced Css skill to solve a problem I was having while making a site. NOTE: I am not a Css expert, I have only been doing Css for the past 6 months, however it felt really good to know how to fix something using an advanced skill.

Anyway enough bragging, I'll let you know how the course goes, so far I highly recommend it!

-Josh