Why I’m Doing This Challenge
Since August 2023, I’ve been working then not working then studying. During 2024, I decided to take a break from anything programming related that wasn’t work as I struggled to sit down and open an editor let alone finish a project.
This was a sign that I was burnt out. I took the time to sit down and re-evaluate my life and decided to go back to university and finish my degree which I had put on hold. Feeling I had taken enough of a break from programming, I decided to get back in by starting a challenge meant for beginners to make a habit out of programming.
Key Info For my Challenge
I decided to program in python as through the language I could get exposure to console app development, automation, data analysis/science, game development, web development, desktop app development and scraping. The language also came installed on most Linux distributions by default so it was easier to get started with plus my university course required it as we needed to perform data mining tasks.
I began this challenge on the 24th of September, 2024. I also decided to use the most enrolled in course on Udemy provided by Dr. Angela Yu as a guide for the challenge.
I spent day one learning about variables. I spent day two learning about data types. Day three was about control flow and logical operators. During day four, I learnt about randomization, python lists and list comprehension. On day five, I went over python loops and the range() function and on day six, I played around with creating functions and utilizing the while loop.
What I’ve Learnt so Far
While I do have prior programming experience in an educational and professional setting, it has been a couple months since I’ve looked at code so I felt I needed a refresher to get me going which is what this week was all about. While I relied on the linked course above for guidance in my learning, I also utilized Chat GPT to help analyze my code solutions and generate challenges based on what I had learned on the day.
Chat GPT Generated Challenge
I’ve added all my code solutions to a public repo on my GitHub so that everything is tracked and backed up.