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Ryan Whelchel
Ryan Whelchel

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Day 22 of #100daysofcode: Inspiration

I woke up today with fresh ideas and inspiration that really helped solve problems that I ran into yesterday, so I want to take some time to talk about my views on sleep.

The importance of sleep

Have you ever gone to sleep after working on something, and then woke up with new ideas? The idea is very common, and it is because our brain continues working on problems after we have gone to sleep. I have heard that, while awake, we consciously look for obvious connections between things, or direct connections. While asleep, our brains look for inobvious connections, or indirect connections.

In my experience, this has absolutely been true. It is part of the reason I want to work on a Study Aid app. Sleep helps you create connections between ideas which you wouldn't normally create while awake, and these indirect connections really help solidify ideas and concepts in your mind.

In the Computer Science and Software Engineering fields, this is especially important. Concepts and ideas in these fields are often hard to picture, so it is very important to let our brains do the heavy lifting at times.

Try it yourself: next time you're working on a hard problem that you're having trouble find a solution to, try sleeping on it. If you think hard about it as you go to sleep, you will almost definitely wake up with new ideas or approaches!

(results may vary)

Today

  • Made a lot of progress on my school project
  • Surfed through a bit more of Understand Django by Matt Layman

Bit of a rest day other than that!

Upcoming

  • Finals and final project sprints: Not much time left!
  • Continue reading about Django,
  • Iron out details regarding the Study Aid app (I really need to name this thing) -- May work on this this weekend
    • Flask vs Django - This is still an ongoing discussion. I received some good advice to stick with what I know in Flask, however I am still considering diving into Django, as I will have free time soon. Diving in headfirst has always been my favorite way to learn, however it is often not efficient!
    • Should I change how I deploy? Should Docker get in the picture?
    • Are there any other systems I should think about using as a part of this project?
  • Learn more about Material UI, I will probably use Material UI a little bit in my (ongoing) school project.
  • Start the Study Aid app!
  • Later in the challenge: AWS Deployment, AWS Certification, and Using Docker!?

Have a great, long weekend everybody, stay safe!

Resources

JS Course - FreeCodeCamp
Understand Django - Matt Layman

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