Progress Report by This Old Man who Wanted to Learn Python

The nice thing about a blog is that your posts are dated.

So it's been just a bit beyond a month since my first post here about a 70+ year old (me) wondering whether he still has enough brain plasticity to learn a new computer programming language --in this case, Python.

So far the answer seems to be yes. I've taken many divergent and thus distracting, side roads. For example, re-learning how to do Blogger posts (like this one) with at least one image included just to make it look more interesting than it actually is. More so, a big chunk of my recent time has been consumed learning Obsidian. Beyond that, I've spent time learning about learning techniques. 

Accordingly, my Obsidian "vault" has grown to encompass specific topic tags such as "#LP" for Learning Python, "#LO" for Learning Obsidian, "#ZB" for learning about Ztelkasten methods, "#LHcss" for learning more about HTML plus CSS, and "#LJs" for planned future learning of JavaScript, which right now I know close to zero about except that I need it to automate my Obsidian tasks. 

Oh wait, There will also be a "#LGit" tag for learning how to use Git and maybe later, even GitHub. Again these are areas I know close to zero about. As I move forward with learning Python, I encounter needs for picking up on all these co-related study areas. Had I known this before, I would not have started with Python. This is a case of ignorance preventing threshold dread. I didn't know what I was getting myself into.

At the moment, I'm learning about making my own Python code modules and then calling on them in my larger, self-imposed projects. More specifically, I've written a bunch of qif_this_Qualifies(input) functions where "qif" stands for Query if. An example would be Query if the user input is a whole number in the range 0 to 5 and return True if yes. That goes inside a while loop that asks the user to try again if they inputted something other than the valid range, including a null response. In other words, input validation. That is useful everywhere. So it should go inside a Qifs module

More to Explore
Is it harder to learn to code after 50?
Are young people too ADHD to focus?
Should people take brain breaks between intense learning sessions?
Can you create your own  story about what you just learned?



be continued ......

 

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