How to Become a Millionaire

I mentioned earlier Dawson's ability to lace his writing with humor and make it interesting. Here's an example.

Monty Python

Fun fact: The Python programming language was actually named after Monty Python, and the books teaching it feature frequent references to spam and 42.


Speaking of books, Mike Dawson's Python Programming For the Absolute Beginner is pretty much a lifesaver. I was able to skim over the first 30 or so pages, because I'm not really an "absolute beginner", but it was nice to have the refresher. Now that I'm getting into the new stuff, I'm finding Dawson's book to be much more readable than Sweigart's. I think some of this is bias, because I'm much more comfortable with paper books than e-books, but some of it is legit. Dawson writes with a sort of subtle humor that makes learning more interesting. Also, at the end of each chapter there are challenge problems, pretty easy tasks, but still they not only cement what I've been reading about, but also keep me engaged, so yay! :D

Practicing

For me, it's the practicing that's the most fun. I know the research is necessary to reach the point where I can practice, but I'd much rather be trying out challenge problems or CodingBat exercises than learning how to traverse data structures or use nested loops. This is where the majority of my obstacles are - I'm itching to just get out there and DO something, but I need to build the foundation in order to do this.
However, I did get a new Python book in the mail today (Mike Dawson's Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner) and it looks pretty promising. I'm crossing my fingers that this will be my stepping stone out of the rut I'm in, because it combines research with practice problems, and that might be enough to satisfy my need to "produce" something.

On Resources

So, I'm coming now to the realization that my troubles with research aren't actually with research - they're with the resources I'm using to do the research. The book I've been learning from is aimed towards much younger kids (as was made quite apparent in the last chapter when it taught how to use Cartesian coordinates - AKA the x,y coordinate system). While I am beginning Python, I'm not beginning at that age level. And I think that's the stem of the problem. It's not the learning itself, just how I'm doing it. Unfortunately, I'm more than halfway through the book, and I just can't bring myself to give up now. Oh well. Downhill stretch now, right?

Finding a Balance

At the moment, so much of my project is just reading and learning, it's hard to write about what I've been doing. I could summarize the hour I spent today working on a Bagels game (this is actually a thing - I'd never heard about it until today), but that would be annoying for me to write, and boring for anyone else to read. It's really difficult to find that balance between documenting my progress and lulling people to sleep. Honestly, there's not that much to say about what I've been doing, so I'm constantly trying to think of what might stand out enough that I should talk about it.
For today, I guess that thing might be that I found the Firefox add-on that lets me download videos from YouTube, and it's really compatible with my internet situation. We have a 5 GB download limit per month on our internet at home, so being able to download a video that I can watch as many times as I need to for only 5-10 MB is pretty much a godsend.
Also, I ordered another book to read on Python - this one has really good reviews, and supposedly has practice problems at the end of each chapter where you actually write your own code - not just copy the code the author gives.

Barnsong

Seeing the documentation of a previous WISE project was really helpful for understanding what I need to work on for my own project. Even though the project(s) shown were totally different than what I'm aiming to do, there were themes that applied to me as well.
I better understand now how much work a WISE project entails - and that that work isn't always successful the first time. At one point during the video, the student mentioned, "Things take longer than expected." This rings so true - I think I sometimes set my expectations too high, and realize that what I've planned isn't realistic. It was also really helpful to see that - as the student in the video said - the success is really in the knowledge gained, not the completion of the project. It's relieving to know that even if I have set the bar too high, and don't manage to finish in the time limit, it's not like an automatic YOU FAIL, or even a rare occurrence type thing.
The video did raise a question for me - how do students deal with cost restrictions? This doesn't apply at all to my project, so I hadn't put much thought into it, but it was brought up in the video, and when I was glancing through the finished project I was assigned to respond to, I saw journal entries about parts that cost thousands of dollars. Most people don't have that sort of money just lying around, so I'm curious as to how this kind of barrier is overcome.
After seeing this video, I do feel more comfortable with my project goal, because I'm not as stressed about what will happen if I don't manage it. However, I also feel like I really need to get to work, because I saw how much effort the student in the video put into his project, and that makes me feel like I've been slacking. I really need to get down to it and put in the effort to pull this whole thing off.

To Do

Current To-do list:

1) Finish the book I've been working on since the start
2) Find a new book to use - preferably one that encourages writing your own code, not just following the author's.
3) Finish CodingBat exercises (won't take too long at this rate)
4) Figure out how to get the Firefox add-on that will allow me to download YouTube videos and thus combat my disagreeable internet at home.