Notes of random things. Mainly coding and life.
When I do coding tasks for school I find really cool solutions and wonderful workarounds from time to time. I wonder how should I remember all this. How should I archive and structure all this knowledge. Should it be like learning a language where I should prepare learing cards (for vocabulary) to remember basic things by heart. Like what goes where when I need to append something to a list.
Good statistics about school and subjects are really difficult to find even though we are quite often talked about the importance of high-quality data. But I found some here: ÕIS – Üldinfo – Statistika – Õppekavad – Õppeainete statistika. Quite… huh.
This is the picture of autumn semester results in the year 2018/2019 on my curriculum IADB17/17. These all are not the first-year subjects! I highlighted the subjects that I study in this first year’s first semester. I wonder what is going on with the basics of programming (ITI0102) where there are 441 students in the beginning but only 271 in the end (out of which 95% get a positive result). Our teacher Ago commented that the drop-out is ~30% and it is significant among session students (which is something I understand).
Also, an interesting finding for me is that the subject named “Sets, relations, systems” (of which I have already written here) seems to be the real gourmet subject. Out of hundreds of students, only 26 have decided to study it. And it also has the second-lowest average grade out of this selection of subjects.
I still have not found anything to use for the graduation rate.
The canteen of IT College has its own Spotify playlist. Because why not. And I like these soundproof phone booths in TalTech Library. I like that doors open themselves. Very effective solution for minimizing the spread of viral infections though minimizing the contact with highly likely contaminated surfaces (like door handles).
Practice will make you better. Don’t expect it to make you perfect.
Malcolm Gladwell, the author of “Outliers” explains the key to success in any field is simply a matter of practicing a specific task that can be accomplished with 20 hours of work a week for 10 years (which makes 10 000 hours).
I started using Toggl to track the time that I spend on different tasks. It is a very good tool for this. For better reporting, I used TalTech as a client and subjects as projects. My tasks mainly include maintaining my online stores and doing work for school. So for reporting it is good to use TalTech as a client filter. This week I see that have spent 12 hours and 46 minutes on Python after school. It is Saturday at the moment so I expect it to reach 15+ hours coding weekly. At some point this week it made 10x what I have spent on a second subject in school.
If we say, that I started coding this week, then 12.75 hours would make 0.13% of my learning path (10 000 hours). So I say, doing it feels like a lot. Like I am always in PyCharm. But thinking that professionals do it 8 hours a day which makes 40 hours a week – it is more than 3 times what I have done this week 😀
Toggl is not the one to blame. Update from week 7 is that I very often forget to turn Toggl on or off. But I think, despite the gaps in tracking I got around 35 hours of independent after school work. Most of it for “Sets, relations, systems” (all Thurdsay and Friday) because I had the test on Friday evening. Python got its 14 hours this week.
Read more:
Our lecturer Ago also suggested documenting the learning path of programming. It is good to look later how it looked like in the beginning and how it feels later. So that others, who are interested in learning to code, could also understand the learning curve and possible struggles.
Continue reading “1st month first impressions – subjects in review”
EU Code Week is a grassroots initiative which aims to bring coding and digital literacy to everybody in a fun and engaging way.
The last part of this EU Code Week aim is somewhat non-relatable. Because I just debugged my WP store like 6 hours (to make stock syncs faster) on Saturday and at the moment struggling with entry-level Python tasks for school. So, I can say this period of “fun and engaging” is very short in the learning curve 🙂 In my previous profession in the pharmaceutical industry it was called misleading communication and it was not allowed.
Or, I may be doing something wrong.
Beginner stuff
I have looked for these things multiple times. Guide on Zone.ee page – really good. List of common SSH commands on Mediatemple page. Useful guide on how to Set Up SSH Keys on Ubuntu 18.04 DigitalOcean page.
To avoid unnecessary googling for set theory symbols I pasted most frequent ones here.
Sources: Wikipedia, Rapid tables
This title is for Google. I am just sharing my experience in hosting websites at an affordable price.
I have tried Dreamhost and Bluehost to save money for some of my voluntary projects (but did not save any). If possible, keep away from these despite them being heavily advertised.
For smaller projects, mainly in the past, I have used planet.ee service (provided by Zone). This is 10GB of space, 1 MySQL database (but you can actually fit multiple WP installations into one), free SSL certificate and much more. Absolutely fantastic thing for 11.88€ per year. Very snappy and simple to use.
Continue reading “Best cheap shared hosting – expert opinion”
An idea that you can give me – through a secure channel so that I actually do not get access to those – your social media passwords (full access) for a specific time. And you need to pay for it.
Option one is cheaper but there is no way to get them back before right time. Unless you crack it with a supercomputer.
The second option is more expensive and if you want to get them back before the right time you need to pay penalty. Useful if you would like to lock yourself out from social media.
Everyone I have spoken to would prefer daytime.
My initial idea was to start session studies. I did my MBA after work so I have previous experience with going to school and working at the same time. But you need to take the IT competency test (EUCIP test) as a part of the application process. This test is quite difficult if you are not a practitioner in this field already and I decided not to take it after getting to know more about the test.
I am happy with daytime studies because it allows me to focus on school full-time without need to work. Thanks to my previous professional life I don’t have to worry about working at the moment. Though, I little bit think about an internship for summer already 🙂 Let’s see where it ends.
Everyone I have talked to would also prefer daytime studies but often it is simply not possible due to different (mainly finance and work-related) obligations.