It’s almost been 3 weeks, so It’s time to review what I’ve learned and done.
I have studied a bunch. I completed cs101 on udacity which took me around 21.5 hours. I worked on three new personal projects (email image downloader, my flask app, and noDaysOff) and I found a lot of new resources to learn from and topics to add to the to-learn list. This 3 week period has been all python. I’ve been really happy that I have been able to study every day since I started. I doubt that will go on forever, but it’s nice to have a good streak going. I’m still trying to understand if python is the right language to focus on in order to get a job, but I’m also still exploring what type of coding goes with what types of jobs. I’m learning a lot of cs fundamentals alongside the python so I am not very concerned if I end up having to focus more on ruby on rails in the future. Plus, python is fun! I like being able to make client-side scripts without having to set up a large dev environment and think about servers. (Ultimately I will need to think about servers though…)
On the less exciting side, I am now starting to realize how monumental the task of writing a large, fast web app is. I listened to a podcast where they mentioned that an important part of the learning process is realizing how little you know. I think I’m there right now. I can understand how to build a single user application without a database, but building it to store everything in a database AND be able to handle thousands of users per second is going to require me to learn a lot more about databases, sorting algorithms, web frameworks, and server setup (and I’m sure much more!). It’s only been 3 weeks though, so I have plenty of time to keep learning.
Big things I want to learn soon:
- django
- more about different database types
- algorithms
- udacity cs250 – web development
Small things I want to learn soon:
- regex
Longer-term things of any size:
- coursera algorithms I
- coursera algorithms II
- git + github
- css
- finish the javascript / ruby tutorial at flatiron academy, and find more in-depth js classes