I'm going to post these just to get my journal up to date. This is from November 29th - Dec 8th. I didn't plan for this to be shared publicly so I may not come back and review them for typos, etc.
I’ve finally started a serious venture into learning how to code. I’m going to learn Python so that can eventually work with OpenAI APIs and build some apps in the near future. First, I’m going to complete Replit’s 100 days of code. I will code for 2 focused hours per day at a minimum. I’ll take notes of what I’ve learned and what I’m struggling with, daily, weekends included.
I started earlier this week so I’ll discuss my day 2 progress today. I completed the section yesterday, but I didn’t feel comfortable with my level of understanding.
We’re learning about variables, inputs, printing a variable and then bug-fixing our code. After completing this, I'll make sure I grasp everything and I'll explain what these terms are. Later in the day, I'll read some supplementary information just to solidify my understanding.
I just finished the lesson. I let replit AI write some of my code. I got good outputs but not the same as the instructions requested. I’m going to take a break (30 minutes) and come back and redo the session. I want to make sure I fully understand these lessons from a foundational level before moving on to the next one. I’m seeking true understanding. This will be my third time redoing day 2 but that’s fine.
Input is when the user gives information to the computer. It will display in the console and then weigh for the user to input something
Input takes something but it has nowhere to go. You change that by giving it a variable name. A variable is the value and name we can use to store data.
Doing this for the third time was helpful.
Now I’m going to read a couple of articles on inputs and variables and also watch a couple of short YouTube videos.
Starting the Day 3 lesson on Concatenate.
It just means connecting things.
I just finished the lesson. Generally, I understood it but I’m not even sure if I did the final exercise correctly which means that I didn’t understand it well enough. I’ll go back and do this lesson again.
I’m not so much confused as I am just in need of repetition. I just have to get the reps in. Will redo this lesson later. I’m going to watch a couple of videos on concatenation first. Then, I’ll come back in an hour or so and finish this lesson.
Starting the Day 4 Challenge on 100 days of code
The thing that worries me before starting is that I don’t remember a lot of things from yesterday. Maybe along with writing some notes, I might need to start copying and pasting some of the code so that I can quickly review previous lessons before moving on to the next one.
Day 4 starts straight into a coding challenge and I’m feeling a bit lost before even starting.
I finished the day 4 task. I don’t feel like I did it well, but I was able to work through it. I’m going to move on to day 5 and see how that goes. If I go through day 5 and have issues, I’ll come back and do day 4 and day 5 again.
I’m going to put the solution code here just so that I can read it and review it again later:
print("Welcome to your Adventure Story Simulator.")
print ()
print("I am going to ask you a bunch of questions and then create an epic story with you as the star.")
print()
name = input("What is your name? ")
print()
enemyName = input("What is your enemy's name? ")
print()
superPower = input("What is your super power? ")
print()
live = input("Where do you live?")
print()
food = input("What is your favorite food?")
print()
print("Hello", name, "Your ability to", superPower, "will make sure you never have to look at", enemyName, "again." "Go eat", food, "as you walk down the streets of", live, "and use", superPower, "for good and not evil!")
Doing day 5 right now. I think after completing day 5, I’m going to spend the weekend starting over from day 1 and redoing all of those lessons. Again, I want to start with a great foundation to make sure I’m fully grasping the lessons and that I can recreate the work with no issues. I should probably be able to redo lessons days 1-5 with no issues tomorrow.
Going to start over from the beginning and do Days 1 through 5 again to make sure I’ve absorbed the material. Again, I want to build on a solid foundation. As I’ve done these before I should be able to move through them quickly. I’ll assess so that I can lay out my weaknesses.
Just finished day 1 again. Feels like it was a great idea to go back and redo these first few days.
It was able to go through that fairly easily. Let’s see if that translates over to the next 4 sections
Just completed day 2 again. I think I’m going to make a habit of repeating these sessions every 5 so that I make sure this stuff sticks. I’m much more comfortable now and it’s helping me understand the concepts at a core level.
Just completed lessons 3 and 4. That went relatively well. The extra practice just helps me solidify my understanding of the material. I’m going to start day 5 again so that I can complete my entire review of the first 5 days and then I’ll leave some thoughts later before starting day 6 tomorrow.
I completed Day 5. I need to practice more with the syntax of If, Then statements so I’ll repeat day 5 tomorrow. I love this flow so far. The key for me is not to cheat the process.
It’s the middle of the night. I’m starting day 6 of 100 days of code. I’m going to complete this one before going to bed
I've completed day 6. Creating password protection seems pretty clear. I need more practice on the syntax. I’ll watch a couple of videos tomorrow about creating username and password. I’ll probably log back in tomorrow morning and redo this section just so that I can practice the structure.
I needed to use previous sections to help me get started on the challenge and I want to be at the point where I can start the challenge without needing to set my work from previous sections.
So I’ll do this one again so that I can get a good hold on the structure so that it’s more natural like the previous sections.
Starting up on Day 7 right now to learn about nesting. Today, I’m going to get to at least Day 10 and then I’ll do days 6-10 over again. I’ll also just do a manual review of the code from days 1-5 just to keep it fresh.
One thing that still isn’t natural is the double equal signs for If, Else ==
I’ll need to practice that to confirm the format so that I’m getting proper usage. It’s still not natural for me yet like when declaring variables.
I had some issues completing the day 7 challenge so I’ll need to go back to practicing nesting. I understand the concept, it just need more reps.
Going to start day 8 now. I might not push to day 10 today. It feels like I need to do some review, but let’s see. I might push through it and then return and just redo sessions 6-10 like I did with 1-5. The difference is that I was going back and reviewing them one by one and not waiting until the end.
Day 8 starts with a challenge. I’m going to finish listening to the day 8 video. However, I’m going to go back to day 5 and repeat those lessons leading up to 8. We have to use input/output, concatenation, if statements, nested if statements, etc to create the custom affirmations generator. I don’t know them well enough to do this right now. So I’ll go review and do what I did with days 1-5. Set a strong foundation!
Doing day 5 again. Important note:
Double equals (==) is asking the computer to compare if these two things are the same.
Related to the above. Picked up an important thing.
A single = changes something
A double == compares to see if something is equal
I just completed the day 5 challenge. I had to debut it a lot. Sometimes I struggle with getting started on the challenges. It seems I’m not comfortable with the lead-off phrases to get my code started and I need to go back and refer to the previous steps to know how to start.
Going to do day 6 over again. Starting now. Wasn’t a very productive coding weekend, but still get the time in daily.
I got through that without too many problems. Something that is bothering me is that when it’s time to do a challenge, I’m struggling with “starting”. If’s asking me to ask for a password and give a nice message once someone logs in, I’m struggling with getting started without reviewing code from previous sessions in the lessons. I feel like I shouldn’t really move forward until I can complete the challenges without going back and reviewing old sessions.
Going go start at day 5 one more time just to get more reps and then won’t do any more reviews like this until I get to day 10. I’ll try to get through lesson 10 by this evening
Moving on to day 7. Once I get started, it’s not too bad but I still seem to have a problem with getting the first two or three lines in to do the challenges. I was certainly better today, but it wasn’t as easy as it should be.
It’s getting better. Again, I just need to get the reps in. Just finished day 7. Now I’m about to start day 8 again.
I’m getting better with starting the days. It seems that just adding more reps is helping me understand what I need to do to get things started so that I can get my code working. I can often figure things out once I start.
The indentation on multiple if an elif is something that also might just require more reps.
I just finished Day 8.
It was relatively easy but I didn’t go as thorough as their example.
I also forgot to add the else statement.
Doing Day 9 now.
I need a lot of help to complete the task at the end of day 9. Again, it feels like it’s difficult for me to get started. I hope this is an issue of reps and
I finished Day 10, but it was a real struggle to do the challenge. I’ll need to restart and do everything over as it makes no sense to move forward to the next day when I can’t complete the challenges easily. The challenges got progressively more difficult from day 5-10 and I feel like I wasn’t grasping everything I need to grasp before moving on and it’s starting to add up on me.
Re-doing day 9. Going to finish day 10 today as well.
Then, I’ll definitely do a thorough review on days 1-10 to make sure I understand everything before moving forward.
Important note:
There are two types of numbers the computer will recognize:
int. whole number (ex: 42)
float. any number with a decimal (ex: 1.81)
I’m starting at day 5 again to try to solidify my foundation. I understand why people move on from these courses though. It’s tedious and you don’t feel like you’re getting anywhere. I feel like I’d get along faster if I was building something. However, I’m going to put the work in to complete this entire course before moving forward. I might do another supplementary one as well. However, after that, I’m going to move to the building via the learning stage. I need to build things.
Redoing these lessons has been so great today. If finally feels like it’s sticking. Going to redo days 9 and 10 as well and try to do at least one more new one tonight.
Starting Day 9 again and then Day 10. Interesting that Paul Graham made a post on X about how people start replit’s 100 days of code and rarely finish. I was just commenting with my wife about that last night... that people don’t finish it... like 230k people have started and only 800 have finished. Now, I want to be one of the few people to finish it. I already planned to, but that’s extra motivation.
I did Day 9 without any problems and surprisingly worked through the challenge pretty easily with no errors on my first run! Yeah!
However, I did just look at the answer and I used if instead of elif and I didn’t close with the else. So if I had put in some different numbers, I could have broken my code. I need to do a good review or test my code thoroughly. Just because it’s “working” doesn’t mean it’s good code.
Off to complete Day 10.
Finished Day 10. Feel good about where I am now. I’m starting to understand code a bit now. I feel like I can get it. Whereas before 9 and 10 felt like too complicated, this feels much more understandable.
Starting Day 11. It goes directly to a challenge. Let’s see if the things I just said above are true.
I finished Day 11 but I used a lot of help from the code suggester. I need to focus on writing my code.
Day 12 is about finding all the bugs. I’ll start that one now and see how it goes.
Day 12 was relatively easy.
Going to do at least 2 days of Replit today. Starting tomorrow, I'll start keeping my logs as a daily journey. Today was just about moving everything over.
Top comments (1)
Keep it up! ✨