Old Man Learns to Code

  I wasted a whole day trying to do something that apparently can't be done, namely, trying to automatically copy into the body of an Obsidian template, a custom metatag typed into the triple underscore frontmatter field. Don't try to replicate my foolishness. Instead, I ultimately realized I could use a nonsense text string  like "xxtp0" (which will be replaced by a definition of a primary topic identifier) and then use Obsidian's Replace function to replace that text with the primary topic I want to mention in a current note. Then there will be additional nonsense text strings  like "xxtp1", "xxtp2", etc. for the subtopic and the subsubtopic and so on. I'm not sure how Google's Blogger will handle a paste of my current under-development Template (in MarkDown format), but here it goes, fingers crossed. --- alias: Sorted_List_of_Best_re_Topic_xxtp0 topic: "xxtp0" sub_topic: "xxtp1" sub-2_topic: "xxtp2" --- ...

I had big big plans for today. Over the past month I had collected dozens, perhaps even hundreds of bookmarks pointing to You Tube videos and other source materials related to learning Python, to learning HTML plus CSS, to learning Obsidiian, to learning about learning. What happened? I barely succeeded in learning how to manipulate image insertions in Obsidian based videos by the Obsidian Tutor ( here ). I may have been better off simply picking an image manipulating plugin based on popularity ( here ). More to Explore Deep Work versus Constant Distractions How I [Dorian] Would Learn To Code (If I Could Start Over in 2025) Obsidian Plugins Review Tech World with Nana My mistake: Trying to Learn ALL at once after 30 Learn Python for Data Science – Full Course for Beginners -- freeCodeCamp.org 7 Hidden Obsidian Features   8 Design Patterns EVERY Developer Should Know Productivity Advice in 67 Minutes

  Kudos to Dev Op Dorian ( here ) for warning us coder wanna be's about the dangers of being distracted by the latest shiny new objects. Dorian also makes good points about going public with your journey because that makes the commitment more real. Also find like situated others and perhaps connect with them on chat boards like Reddit and Discord. For me that means making it routine and habitual to check in on Reddit boards like r/PythonLearning ,  r/learnprogramming , r/ObsidianMD ,  r/learnpython ,  r/careerguidance , .... but those are also the shiny distractions that Dorian warns of. Props also to Dave Farley of Modern Software Engineering for explaining that OOP does not necessarily call for focusing on objects and can instead provide a blueprint for functions and/or data structures . See also  FP vs OOP More to Explore Object Oriented Programming is not what I thought freeCodeCamp Talks Modern Python Developer's Toolkit

  It's becoming apparent that I can't learn as quickly as my 20 year old self used to do. This 70+ year old brain is struggling to keep up with those You Tube tutorials that promise to teach Python in 5 hours or less. In particular, I'm talking about Object Oriented Programming (OOPs). My brain starts spinning when the lecturers ask me to know my self. So self.object equals myself? It's becoming too philosophical or at least very confusing. Luckily I stumbled across a You Tube channel that teaches it more slowly than the others. It's the CS50P class which can be found here . The teacher reviews the basics of strings, tuples, lists and dictionaries. He slowly builds up to the concept of having your own custom objects in a manner reminiscent of how our math teachers built up proofs of various math theories. The CS50P course (where CS probably stands for 'Computers for Seniors' ha ha) will take much longer than the Python-in-less-than-60-seconds courses. But p...

At age 70+, my brain is no longer a sponge . Or if it is, it's a brittle one. "Don't get ahead of yourself," they warn. It's too easy to fall prey to the click-baiting You Tube ads. "Come watch my tutorial," each one crows. "I've got lots of goodies for you to learn about stuff .... about Python, about Obsidian, about the latest and greatest in AI (Artificial Intelligence). You name it, I've got it. Lots and lots of it" Sure you do. You also have a revenue-generating ad waiting for me inside of whatever you're hawking. Can my brain absorb all this free education and Brilliant advertising without exploding? I'm not sure anymore. There are nights I wake up filled with anxiety . Am I progressing down that Python acquisition roadmap fast enough. Do I understand list comprehension? Well, no. Not yet But what exactly is my rush? The point is not to shovel more and more "information" through my not-so-plastic-anymore brain....

A contributor on Reddit/Learning-Python  (1d ago) raised an interesting philosophical question. Why bother having Object Oriented Programming instances and their respective methods? After all, the computer is executing the same function whether you call it an object's method or you call it an independent function. Good question. He's right. The computer doesn't care. It's all 1's and 0's flipping unsympathetic transistors, isn't it? Yes. Precisely. It has nothing to do with the efficiency of the computer. Instead it is about us and how our brains come to comprehend the data piles to whom we assign different object names in the source listing. One object might be of class 'Automobile', say; and our brains project certain expectations to that alphabetic "name" when we see it in the source code listing. Another object may be referenced as class 'Airplane' and as a result of that verbiage, our brains project certain expecta...

I lied. Back in Post number one ( click here to see it ), I implied that I was just another old geezer learning Python. I kind of promised that I would take readers along with me on this senior citizen's journey while learning the language. But then I went off on my own without logging my journey. It went fast. Part of the reason is that some 40 years ago I was a computer engineer. I coded in something called, "assembly language" ( never mind ) and even soldered in the digital logic chips into the hardware. So it was misleading to say I knew nothing about computers or software engineering and I would be advancing at the speed of a complete noob. In 1980 I joined the "Dark Side" as they say in the Star War movies. Rather than staying in the tech world, I went to law school.  I haven't coded much since then. I lost touch with the coding world. Much has changed in the interim. Today we have all these free and wonderful YouTube videos that teach all manner of ...

In the previous post (here) I lament over the frustration of finding a bug in my code. At the same time, I am learning how to use Obsidian to jot down the notes for my so-called "second brain" Having a "second brain" is useless if the lesson learned is not well rooted into the 'first brain' (your biological one). Here, in my latest fiasco, the lesson gets rooted because of the frustrations experienced in not knowing for many hours why the code was failing and because of the OCD anxiety generated by the frustration. One learning expert (to the right) explains the importance of making a lesson stick by creating a number of memorization 'traces'. Mindless copy & paste inot Obsidiain is a waste of time. The experience with the lesson has to be viceral.

For want of a Parens  Well, turns out the Dunning Kruger force is strong in this one (me). I thought I was advancing past noob status. I thought I had a modicum of competence in Python. Not so. Oh why couldn't the PyCharm interpreter just scream at me, "Fool, you forget the Open/Close Parentheses plus colon at the end of the string method!" No. I had to spend hours staring at the code but not seeing it. Finally, the aha moment came. I slapped palm into forehead . Enough said about my failings of the day. Now it is time for us to don our bathing suits and jump into the code swamp provided below. By the way. You can't simply paste your code into Blogger. HTML will eliminate the indentations unless we use the <pre> and <code> opening tags plus their partner closers, </code> </pre>.  See the How To Article Here The goal was to put together a simple module of test functions that query a user's input() to see if it is v...

The King is dead. Long live the King.  Perhaps it sounds like blasphemy for all the Obsidian enthusiasts out there. But it's true. There are things higher up on the graph than Obsidian. " Learning " (item 150 in the figure below) is higher in the Hierarchy of Brain Management  (e.g. PKM) than Note/Graph-Making (164) or the use specifically of the Obsidian application (165). There are different categories of Learning (150), spanning from Beneficial (151) to Harmful (152) and including Benign (153), where the latter can include time-wasting distractions. A book could be written about the graph to the right. However that would be an example of distraction  because the title of this blog is "Old Man Learns to Code." The "Aging" process 100 can include both the upswing of cognitive capabilities from conception through birth as well as up into the age of 25 before it plateaus and then begins to decline as one progresses beyond 50 and towards the "golden...

 When you buy a boxed 1000-piece puzzle from a store, you start off with a huge head start. The start is that of knowing your puzzle-assembling journey will have a definitive end point. There will be a definitive. solution. Your  huge head start will include knowing precisely what the big picture solution should look like. It's all mapped out on the cover of the box. The same is not true when you try to piece together tidbits of information about a subject area whose terrain you do not yet know. Say you want to acquire mastery over a new computer language such as Python, Javascript, or VBA.  No one hands you a closed box with the big picture map of the terrain on its front cover. As you start capturing small snapshots of the new and unfamiliar terrain, you simply don't know if you have all the puzzle pieces on the table. You don't know which ones you might be missing. You don't know if the pieces you have gathered thus far are supposed to fit together. You are simply po...

 Many an Obsidian enthusiasts out there sing the praises of this note-taking application. But buyer beware. The reason Obsidian works is because you, the user has to put in the hard work of making your own highly personalized notes; of meticulously tending to your own small garden --as some metaphorically refer to it. More to the point, and as the lecturer to the right clarifies, Obsidian should be call a Note-"Making" application as opposed to an information capturing tool. With each note, you have to fire up the steam boilers of your own brain and come up with your own, highly personalized expressions when generating each note. You have to dig up the expressions that are most meaningful to you personally when creating your self-centered Zettel-kasten notes. ("Dig up" -- get it? A metaphoric homage to the garden tending arts.) It is in the doing of this hard and focused work that you generate the neuron connections in your brain for improving your pe...

 It was Robert Frost who said, "And I took the [road] less traveled".   Well, in my case; after hearing Network Chuck mention something about Obsidian , I got diverted into learning about the PKM community and their love affair with that note-taking application. It seemed to me that learning Python, HTML, CSS, AHK and related other stuff would be enhanced with use of the Zetta-cast note taking systems they all rave about. (And actually, according to one of the Zetta-cast enthusiasts, we should refer to it as a note- MAKING system rather than a taking /copying / capturing system. It is vital that we each make out own notes using our own, personally-meaningful set of words and/or other expressions.) Again, time will tell if this side diversion into the world of compute-facilitated note making .will pay off  Eventually we will get to the business of diving into the details about a 70 year old (me) trying to become proficient in Python and HTML. One up front tease ...