Current Events > Welp... I'm officially starting my coding journey

(+) Yeah! (+)

I've been shying away from learning coding for so long. Time to go after it. I'm hoping to get the CCNA Devnet cert within about 6 months. We'll see how that goes.

yeah but can you write an MS Excel If Statement to solve the world's energy crisis?

So I'm now 2 hours into a 4 hour beginners course video about Python. This is good stuff so far. Part of my problem was an inability to read Python code and not being familiar with certain terms.

At work, they were encouraging us to just copy and paste code from the internet to accomplish tasks, but I like to actually understand what I'm doing if I'm gonna do something in a professional environment.

you can get a surprising amount of value by just copy and pasting code from the internet and this is a normal thing people do

it's just that whe you get to the parts where you can't do this, you reallly have to know what you're doing or things come tumbling down real fast

kirbymuncher posted...

you can get a surprising amount of value by just copy and pasting code from the internet and this is a normal thing people do

it's just that whe you get to the parts where you can't do this, you reallly have to know what you're doing or things come tumbling down real fast

Yeah, I get that. I just don't want to have a bunch of borrowed code that I don't actually understand. If I have to troubleshoot or modify something when we upgrade to a new firmware, I'd rather understand what's broken and be able to fix it.

CableZL posted...

So I'm now 2 hours into a 4 hour beginners course video about Python. This is good stuff so far. Part of my problem was an inability to read Python code and not being familiar with certain terms.

At work, they were encouraging us to just copy and paste code from the internet to accomplish tasks, but I like to actually understand what I'm doing if I'm gonna do something in a professional environment.

Innnnnteresting. I'm taking a Python class right now. I took it before but dropped it because that class was fucked. I get A's and B's couple C's (fuck math) but this class has fucked my shit up. You gotta learn GIT? Work with Linux? If so we shall compare notes this year buddy.

Is this to change fields or just having knowledge in your field, which I'm assuming is IT related?

What resources are you using? Which 4 hour course are you taking?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/9/9/AAGm3rAADm1b.jpg

I gave up learning to code but Python was the only language that had it's shit together.

What kind of development are you looking to do? I think Python's become a bit of a lingua franca for ML, JS for webdev, heaven knows what for enterprise these days.

Johnny_Nutcase posted...

Innnnnteresting. I'm taking a Python class right now. I took it before but dropped it because that class was fucked. I get A's and B's couple C's (fuck math) but this class has fucked my shit up. You gotta learn GIT? Work with Linux? If so we shall compare notes this year buddy.

Yeah, I'll have to learn GIT somewhat, but the IDEs I use do most of that work without me having to do much other than clicking the correct button for the step in the procses I'm in.

HornyLevel posted...

Is this to change fields or just having knowledge in your field, which I'm assuming is IT related?

What resources are you using? Which 4 hour course are you taking?

Network engineering is increasingly moving towards requiring network automation, which involves using python and/or Ansible, at least in our environment at work. I also just took the CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure written exam a few weeks ago and I was surprised at how many questions on the exam were related to Python.

This is the beginner course I'm going through right now:
https://youtu.be/rfscVS0vtbw

TheMikh posted...

What kind of development are you looking to do? I think Python's become a bit of a lingua franca for ML, JS for webdev, heaven knows what for enterprise these days.

It's mostly for network automation. If I get really good at this stuff, I could consider changing from a network engineer role to a software engineer role. We'll see how it goes, though.

My job recently hired a guy who has both network engineering and software engineering skills, and he got moved to a role where he primarily focuses on software engineering for the network engineering team. That might be interesting to do.

I highly recommend watching this guys Python videos.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-osiE80TeTt2d9bfVyTiXJA-UTHn6WwU

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

I cut my teeth on Apple 2 somewhere in the 80s, and I will never hate anyone going beyond me.
Perhaps I may learn something from them?

CableZL posted...

Network engineering is increasingly moving towards requiring network automation, which involves using python and/or Ansible, at least in our environment at work. I also just took the CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure written exam a few weeks ago and I was surprised at how many questions on the exam were related to Python.

This is the beginner course I'm going through right now:
https://youtu.be/rfscVS0vtbw

Nice, thank you.

How do you think you did on the CCIE exam with the Python related questions? Did they totally trip you up or were you still able to understand and answer properly?

HornyLevel posted...

How do you think you did on the CCIE exam with the Python related questions? Did they totally trip you up or were you still able to understand and answer properly?

I got 60% of the Python-related questions correct. I went into the exam knowing a tiny bit of python. The style of the questions was a bit above my head, but I was able to use the tiny bit of what I know to eliminate bad answers and choose from 1 or 2 good answers. I passed the exam, so that's all that really matters in that regard, but... I would have liked to have been more confident on those.

I will be your Gandalf if you want, or maybe a Randagast.
I've been coding since the 80s, got colleged in that in the 90s and 00s, and somehow became a PHP Sauron in the 10s.

Python is great. I have experience with C++, Assembly, and C. However, Python is just miles easier to code. I went from literally a square to automating all our equipment for mundane tasks in a week for a research project and I'm doing.

Assembly clicked with me as well, but nobody uses Assembly.

Yo, how old are you QuestionM?

I'm starting acoding bootcamp Monday. To be honest, I'm worried that I'll try it and realize I don't like it. But I know there's a lot of potential to improve my income, so I definitely have to try.

Man I started learning to code a few months ago myself. Python is a lot of fun. Im a few weeks from finishing this full time cyber security bootcamp, and having a base knowledge of code has been super helpful in this class.

Python is super user friendly, too.

Slaya4 posted...

However, Python is just miles easier to code.

Python scares me. Mandatory tabs are uncanny for reasons I know but can't explain.

Been looking to get into coding & I found this website called Odin's Project. Would that be a good place to start? Currently going through my A+ certification & I'm interested in Python as well.

If you know any language that is function name (args) {} you already know the rest.

CableZL posted...

So I'm now 2 hours into a 4 hour beginners course video about Python. This is good stuff so far. Part of my problem was an inability to read Python code and not being familiar with certain terms.

At work, they were encouraging us to just copy and paste code from the internet to accomplish tasks, but I like to actually understand what I'm doing if I'm gonna do something in a professional environment.

99% of everything I learned came from copy pasting & then modifying it to set how it changed as I messed around with stuff.

Maybe that's a little exaggeration. The biggest thing I ever just sat down and learned how to use organically is regular expressions.

3 hours into the beginner course... Almost there. I'm gonna finish up the rest in the morning and then start the intermediate course.

Just got to the part about writing to or creating new files with python... this is pretty awesome.

Python is great

Whew, just finished the beginner course video. Really good stuff. Gonna start on the intermediate course tomorrow.

Honestly, assembly and C are the languages that make the most sense. That's probably because I have an electrical background, though, and I don't like the abstraction away from the hardware.

Most people will cringe, but if there isn't a subroutine command like JSR, I'm not really interested in programming something that high level

I'm glad I got started on this. Hopefully I can get really good with coding. I work with some guys who are pretty amazing with this stuff.

When I'm all moved, I'm planning to put my phd work, which was all done with Matlab and TCL script, into Python. It'll be a great exercise.

After that, I'll try to dive into VBA.

Congrats.

I can never gauge my programming abilities because I never learned it formally (my first programming was Sage which is Python + common mathy type things) and all my work related programming is highly specific to my field, so there's very involved code that I've written but I feel like there are lots of really surface level gaps in my knowledge.

11110111011 posted...

Honestly, assembly and C are the languages that make the most sense. That's probably because I have an electrical background, though, and I don't like the abstraction away from the hardware.

Most people will cringe, but if there isn't a subroutine command like JSR, I'm not really interested in programming something that high level

username checks out

I think you're sort of crazy but there need to be some people who program that sort of thing so I'm glad you like it at least <_<

I fucking hate python. Very unpleasant language to code in. I do most of my work in c# and typescript, but wouldn't hate going back to working in c++ if I had time to relearn it.

kirbymuncher posted...

username checks out

I think you're sort of crazy but there need to be some people who program that sort of thing so I'm glad you like it at least <_<

Nobody really "programs" in those languages in terms of what kind of software we use. C and ASM are used for low level embedded programs, like your digital watch. C++ is used for most performance related issues as it's extremely unlikely even the best ASM coder can make a faster application than gcc -O3.

In the event that the C++ compiler is doing something stupid and you know what the binary output SHOULD look like, you can just erase the problematic C++ code and write the assembly you want in that spot while still writing the rest of the application in C++.

ASM is also used for a lot of local software hacking, like memory exploits, bypassing DRM, cheating in video games, etc, but even then usually EAC exploits only involves assembly to a point where it loads the code that the hacker wants to run that was written in something else.

Now I'm getting into the intermediate python course. This is super interesting. I used to shy away from anything advanced with networking because I didn't understand how to interpret most things. Now that I'm learning more and more with python, I can definitely see myself using this a bunch.

I think the hard part, at least initially, will be deciding what I want to do in order to start working on the code.

I'm about an hour and a half into this intermediate python course. I'm noticing that I'm able to read and work with the code a lot better than before/when I started.

Before, when I would get an error, my mind would almost freeze up because I didn't understand what was wrong. Now when I get an error, I'm fixing it within a few seconds and moving on.

2 hours into the intermediate course. Stopping for tonight. I'm learning so much. This is awesome stuff. I'm really starting to understand how to read python without thinking about it too much.

I would highly recommend taking the time to learn C or a C based language, because learning with python or with fully dynamic languages takes away a lot of the context around memory, allocation, and data structures, as well as the difference between value and reference in terms of passing args.

warlock7735 posted...

I would highly recommend taking the time to learn C or a C based language, because learning with python or with fully dynamic languages takes away a lot of the context around memory, allocation, and data structures, as well as the difference between value and reference in terms of passing args.

I'm doing this mostly for work and to get another certification. If I see a need to learn C or a C-based language arise, I'll go after it.

I made a little bit of progress tonight. Gonna continue after work tomorrow. About 3 and a half hours left in the intermediate python video.