A Perplexed Python
30/09/2016 11:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaIt’s spring time in Serpent Land and time for Ozzie to do lots of sorting and tidying. It’s also time to tie up loose ends and go on an online learning binge because soon November will be around the corner. There’s something about this time of year that unleashes the inner productivity porn junkie.
It’s the power of the deadline that makes it possible to churn out 50,000 words for November and likewise it is the deadline of the witching hour of Halloween that provides the motivation to get stuff done during October.
There is also another very good reason to be super organized.
October is going to be a Trump fest on steroids and this serpent is a bit of a Trump Junkie. Not in an adoring sycophantic kind of way but more like some biologist curious about a particularly toxic and venomous specimen of cane toad. I’ve had previous experience with other toads in human form and they are uncannily similar in many ways especially regarding a complete disdain for those pesky and annoying things called facts and a belief that life is a zero sum game with room for only one Winner. Whatever it takes…..
This week’s boxing match with Hillary’s smug satisfaction after some very successful Trump baiting and his blustering bull in a china shop hissy fits is just the warm up. Spent way too much time drooling over the countless cartoons of the encounter and I need to keep the powder dry for the next four weeks of viciousness. It’s going to get very feral very fast and it will be fun to see how low he will go with that ‘winning temperament’.
A few more sharp pins in that giant ego balloon could prove most entertaining and scary indeed.
So crazy is the Izzie that I have even resurrected the distant memories of those online courses and decided that it’s time to once again dip the forked tongue in the deep and scary pool that is the Python programming language.
The golden days of online courses are long over but there are a few out there that still let you learn for free with access to all the course materials and assignments just minus the pretty bit of digital paper that is the course certificate at the end.
There I was thinking that I could slack off for the first few weeks while they dealt with the basics but several attempts at the first multiple choice quiz scoring a miserable 7 out of 12 questions correct (with 10/12 being the passing grade) quickly got me out of such complacency. Unlike the previous courses, this mob are a sneaky lot. They show which questions you got right or wrong but without the explanations or options to choose from meaning that it is very difficult to game the quizzes. It also means that the feedback is not as useful for folks who actually want to learn the stuff.
There is really no logical explanation for even attempting to do such a course since it is highly unlikely I will ever actually use the program to do anything.
Writing Python code requires a ridiculous amount of patience and very beady eyes. While I can barely tell the difference between a full stop and a comma, the program certainly can and tosses fits leaving Izzie completely clueless as to where the error could be.
It’s more a case of use it or lose it. Maybe after the fifth or sixth attempt at learning, there will be a eureka moment with flashing green lights and sudden insight.
But it is an interesting exercise to see the various styles of teaching. That is where it becomes readily apparent that it is more motivating to learn difficult stuff if it is essential to create a game or some other useful project rather than simply learning a bunch of things with no apparent purpose. I suppose it would be a bit like learning a language with the aim of being able to navigate your way around the city on public transport, go shopping or order a meal in a restaurant as opposed to just learning lists of vocabulary and rules of grammar.
In the world of grammar books, conditionals and subjunctive are reserved for the smart students and the advanced sections of the book whereas in the real world they are extremely useful and important. If you can only talk about what is real and what has happened then you begin to feel more like a robot than a human.
After 6 attempts of the online quiz finally managed to score the minimum 10/12 required and now I get to do it all over again next week with a programming project tossed in for good measure. With max 3 hours online time day able to be devoted to such stuff, will be interesting to see how long it takes to jump ship and slink off into the darkness.
It’s the power of the deadline that makes it possible to churn out 50,000 words for November and likewise it is the deadline of the witching hour of Halloween that provides the motivation to get stuff done during October.
There is also another very good reason to be super organized.
October is going to be a Trump fest on steroids and this serpent is a bit of a Trump Junkie. Not in an adoring sycophantic kind of way but more like some biologist curious about a particularly toxic and venomous specimen of cane toad. I’ve had previous experience with other toads in human form and they are uncannily similar in many ways especially regarding a complete disdain for those pesky and annoying things called facts and a belief that life is a zero sum game with room for only one Winner. Whatever it takes…..
This week’s boxing match with Hillary’s smug satisfaction after some very successful Trump baiting and his blustering bull in a china shop hissy fits is just the warm up. Spent way too much time drooling over the countless cartoons of the encounter and I need to keep the powder dry for the next four weeks of viciousness. It’s going to get very feral very fast and it will be fun to see how low he will go with that ‘winning temperament’.
A few more sharp pins in that giant ego balloon could prove most entertaining and scary indeed.
So crazy is the Izzie that I have even resurrected the distant memories of those online courses and decided that it’s time to once again dip the forked tongue in the deep and scary pool that is the Python programming language.
The golden days of online courses are long over but there are a few out there that still let you learn for free with access to all the course materials and assignments just minus the pretty bit of digital paper that is the course certificate at the end.
There I was thinking that I could slack off for the first few weeks while they dealt with the basics but several attempts at the first multiple choice quiz scoring a miserable 7 out of 12 questions correct (with 10/12 being the passing grade) quickly got me out of such complacency. Unlike the previous courses, this mob are a sneaky lot. They show which questions you got right or wrong but without the explanations or options to choose from meaning that it is very difficult to game the quizzes. It also means that the feedback is not as useful for folks who actually want to learn the stuff.
There is really no logical explanation for even attempting to do such a course since it is highly unlikely I will ever actually use the program to do anything.
Writing Python code requires a ridiculous amount of patience and very beady eyes. While I can barely tell the difference between a full stop and a comma, the program certainly can and tosses fits leaving Izzie completely clueless as to where the error could be.
It’s more a case of use it or lose it. Maybe after the fifth or sixth attempt at learning, there will be a eureka moment with flashing green lights and sudden insight.
But it is an interesting exercise to see the various styles of teaching. That is where it becomes readily apparent that it is more motivating to learn difficult stuff if it is essential to create a game or some other useful project rather than simply learning a bunch of things with no apparent purpose. I suppose it would be a bit like learning a language with the aim of being able to navigate your way around the city on public transport, go shopping or order a meal in a restaurant as opposed to just learning lists of vocabulary and rules of grammar.
In the world of grammar books, conditionals and subjunctive are reserved for the smart students and the advanced sections of the book whereas in the real world they are extremely useful and important. If you can only talk about what is real and what has happened then you begin to feel more like a robot than a human.
After 6 attempts of the online quiz finally managed to score the minimum 10/12 required and now I get to do it all over again next week with a programming project tossed in for good measure. With max 3 hours online time day able to be devoted to such stuff, will be interesting to see how long it takes to jump ship and slink off into the darkness.
no subject
Date: 2016-09-30 06:40 pm (UTC)And if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask me! ;)
no subject
Date: 2016-10-06 12:33 pm (UTC)A new course has started this week called Living at the nuclear brink so that's going to get priority over Python especially since it might be useful background information for November's adventures.
I so so miss the tablet that just went and died back in May. It had a really good Mastermind game app - the one with the colour codes as well as some Sudoku apps. It's a nightmare doing any such thing on a pissy little phone screen and when I went to get Mastermind they had gone and replaced it with a new version which is just awful. Not simple and elegant and easy to use like the old version on the tablet.
The fun is in trying to find some reliable procedure for solving such puzzles. Of course different strategies are needed for different levels of difficulty. If I find something that works then those sorts of puzzles are no longer interesting and it's time to move on to the next lot.
Of course such puzzles could come in handy if I ever found myself on a desert island with no internet or in solitary confinement in Guantanamo Bay.