Treehouse 14 Day Trial (Day 3)

Today I finished off  the How to Make a Website course. It's the first course in the Front End Web Development track.

It was really well done. It took me approximately 10 hours to complete. I have taken 2 extension courses and worked through an HTML & CSS book. I still learned quite a bit. The course was well presented and fairly easy to follow along with.

One nice thing is that after you complete a course the teacher will email you to encourage you. I normally turn off extra emails but it is actually nice to receive these congratulations from your teachers even if they are automatically generated. Since you are watching the videos you start to get to know the instructors and it's nice to receive a pat on the back from them.

I was just starting the next course in the track. It's called CSS Foundations. During the first video he mentioned that if you wanted a more in-depth look at HTML you could first complete the basic HTML course.

I felt like I had this information covered so I was happy to see you can skip through the content and quickly do the quiz and code challenges. I don't recommend doing this but it is nice that they don't force you through content that you already have a handle on.

They also have a slider you can bump up to increase (or decrease) the playback speed of the video. The slider goes from sleepwalker @ 50% to chipmonk @ 200% in 25% increments. It's pretty handy if you need it.

Here is my referral code for 50% off your first month.
50% off at Treehouse Learn how to build websites & apps, write code or start a business.

You can also get 14 days for free here:
https://teamtreehouse.com/subscribe/plans

Treehouse 14 Day Trial (Day 2)

So today I went through and tried a sample of different content. Treehouse has a cool "ring" graphic that represents the different content that you have completed.

New subjects show up as different colors. For example here is somebody that has studied HTML and CSS

And here is my ring with some added content.

It's a pretty cool shorthand to see what the other users are into.

I also tried the "Treehouse Club" JavaScript content. This content is targeted at kids 9-14. Interestingly it seems to be less hand holdy than the regular content. I guess kids have less to unlearn and don't require long explanations for things. Just get in there and play with the code was the feeling I was getting. The teacher covered a lot of ground in a short amount of time. It was a pretty nice overview.

That's it for day 2.

Treehouse 14 Day Trial (Day 1)

I originally found out about Treehouse by watching the Foundation 14 episode with Ryan Carson. It sounded like a great idea but I wasn't ready to jump in just yet.

I have done some other online and classroom training and I wanted to see how Treehouse compares.

I started with the "Front End Development" track. This would be a good introduction to the site and let me practice my HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

So far I really like it. The sessions are quick and bite sized. You get a short video instruction, sometimes a quick quiz, and an opportunity to try out the code and submit it for correctness.

They also have a built in IDE called "Workspaces" that lets you save your work as you follow along. You can use this if you don't yet have a favorite IDE or text editor.

I'll try to check in each day and give an update and see how I like the service at the end of the 14 days.

Here is my referral code for 50% off your first month.
50% off at Treehouse Learn how to build websites & apps, write code or start a business.

You can also get 14 days for free here:
https://teamtreehouse.com/subscribe/plans

AngularJS Fundamentals In 60-ish Minutes

Im currently working through my JavaScript and found this video and courseware on AngularJS.

Video

Here is the course on Udemy. It's currently discounted 59%.

Here's the link:

AngularJS JumpStart with Dan Wahlin

Finally Finished Exercise 37

I am a little angry at Zed for dumping me off in the deep end.

http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/ex37.html

Exercise 37 has you look up 31 keywords. Explain how they are used, and then write a little code demonstrating how it works. That's a lot of work and maybe 13 of those keywords I never encountered nor were they explained in the book. It was like good luck figuring this stuff out.

At first I was thinking hey this is great I'll go look all this stuff up and really learn a lot. I did learn a lot. I'm glad I went through it. But by the time I finished the exercise I was a little ticked off. :)

I did find that I got a lot of good information out of the following places.

Python For Kids: A lot of really clear examples. The only problem is they don't go into some of the more advanced stuff.

Real Python: Really well presented information on the topics. Explanations and examples from this book is what got me a little irritated with Zed for leaving me out in the weeds.

Writing Idiomatic Python: Again some really great and well thought out examples to help get your head around the correct way to write Python. Not everything was covered in this book but what I did find was very helpful.

The main websites I used were:
TutorialsPoint
The Official Python Documentation
The Official Python Tutorial

Also pydoc keyword in a terminal window had a lot to offer.

Man I hope exercise 38 is a little more forgiving.
--Steve

Linux on a Chromebook via Crouton

I am amazed at how easy this is to get up and running.

Lifehacker Link

1. Enable Developer Mode.
2. Download and run the Crouton script.
3. Start the environment.

Pretty cool. Being able to swap instantly back and forth between ChomeOS and Ubuntu with simple key commands is super convenient.

I wish I knew how easy and cool this was. I would have done it immediately.

--Steve

Digital Ocean

I was thinking of using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud for my website but it seems like overkill. It also feels overly complex to host a simple website and blog.

I'm going to give Digital Ocean a try. You can get a pretty nice set up for only $5 a month and ramp things up as you need them.

You can also create a instance in 55 seconds. You can clone, snapshot, delete, and rebuild quickly. It seems really nice for testing things out before you make a larger commitment.

I'm probably going to move this blog over to GHOST and finally fire up the main website.

Stay tuned!

--Steve

Flash Cards For Logic Study

Hello All,

I am working on Exercise 27 of Learn Python the Hard Way.

Zed has recommended Anki for creating flash cards in previous lessons.

It seems to work pretty well but I was wondering if any of you know of a good online or cool old Linux version of flash card study programs.

Now that I think of it it might even be a neat little project.

Thanks,
--Steve

Touch Typing Practice for Programmers.

I'm trying to get my typing speed up. I have used all sorts of touch typing programs but wanted something a little more focused on touch typing as a programmer.

Typing.io has typing lessons that covers 16+ programming languages including Python.

If you sign up ($5 a month) you can add your own code or lessons. I'm using it to upload my Learn Python The Hard Way lessons then type them in using the keyboard/finger map.

This lets me practice the lesson and also lets me practice my typing. You can try it for free to see if you think it's helpful. I think it's kind of expensive but I'm going to try the paid version for at least 1 month.

Check it out.

For regular trying practice I'm trying out Type-Fu.
It's got a nice clean interface and has a great look and feel. The website says it's $10 but when I bought it from the Chrome web store it was $5. This is a one time purchase and can be used offline. You can try it out and even get a refund if you don't like it within 30 minutes.

If these don't work I'm going back to Mavis Beacon... Not Really.

--Steve

What can't Python do?

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/01/how-to-hack-okcupid/
Using Python to hack OKCupid!

Runnable.com Code Snippets to go

http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/02/runnable-wants-to-become-the-youtube-of-code/
Looks like they have collected a lot of good code examples.
Let me know if you use it and if you use it how you like it.
--Steve

Sounds like a book worth reading.

I was reading reddit.

When I found this post:

That points to this blog post:

About this book:

That is apparently online here:

Programming Cheat Sheet

http://overapi.com/python/


Looks cool, check it out!
--Steve

Cake or Pi?

I like Cake but Pi is beautiful.

I am interested in Data Visualisation. Not sure that Pi is what needs to be visualized but here it is.
I love the Numberphile and Computerphile guys.

Check them out!
--Steve

Happy New Year Flask

Happy New Year!

I was looking for Python Podcasts and ran across From Python Import Podcast. I thought it was pretty good. I hope they put them out on a regular basis. I'd like to hear more.

They had Katie Cunningham on. They talked about her book Sams Teach Yourself Python in 24 Hours. It sounds interesting for people that want to learn Python. 

They also talked about Flask which is a microframework for Python. Sounds like a quick and easy way to get your Python up on the web. I'm going to give it a try once I have something I want to put up. I have some ideas (on paper) for some small sample projects but I haven't started coding them yet.

Have any of you used Flask? How did you like it?

Talk to you soon,

--Steve