Class defined

I finished my latest class at Oregon State on my way to my CompSci degree.  I'm taking a quarter off to concentrate on job searching, and to drill in more leetcode problems to help reinforce the concepts I've learned in my classes.

Outside of python, I'm think Rust will be my next step for learning.  

But for now, I'm back to digitizing my old notes in markdown for eventual hosting on a GitHub blog. 

Conference Ends

Quick last post about PyCon 2025.  I'm definitely headed back in the future.  The networking opportunity and genuine connections made at every table make it the best conference I have attended.

I just finished up my Data Structures class at Oregon State and am going to be taking the summer quarter off to concentrate on my job search.  

I'm also going to buckle into my portfolio and try to get a few finished projects online.  

PyCon inspiration

One thing going to PyCon did for me was to really inspire doing some work on my own.  

I'm taking a quarter off from classes at OSU and going to concentrate on my job search and building out a few small web apps for my portfolio.

Listening to so many people who got into using python through sheer luck is such a great motivator.  It reminds me that we can take the time we need to learn what we need.

There was also a very grounded sense of use around A.I. and the outlandish claims being made by the technocrats.  Everyone I met was very knowledgeable about how machine learning could help us, but never replace us.  

PyCon First Timer

It's been an interesting run since the pandemic started.  Hard to convince myself that large in person meetups are worth it, but PyCon was actually quite easy to dive into.  

My fellow attendees and the staff were helpful and full of pride for being there, creating an atmosphere full of acceptance and excitement.  I even signed up for a few volunteer shifts at the registration desk thanks to how good I felt.  

I'll get into specific talks I attended next week, but I'm still riding the high from the conference even now two weeks later.

PyCon US 2025

I attended PyCon in Pittsburgh PA this past week and it was a great time. Beyond all the great talks and speakers there was a huge sense of community that I came across the entire weekend. 

Comparing to other conferences I have attended PyCon really sticks out.  Every conversation I got to have over lunch or in the hallway was uplifting and really showcased the diversity of the language and the people using it.  

I also had a few "celebrity" encounters, breakfast with Bruce Eckel, a nice chat with Al Sweigart over OCR packages, and even got to say hello to Dawn Gibson-Wages and talk current state of the industry.

My next few posts will be about the conference in greater detail.

Type this: Data

Learning about abstract data types right now in class.  I'll admit with our government now openly kidnapping citizens to send to death camps in foreign countries makes everything seem silly.  Yet I continue with the learning journey I've always been on.

This course is a great introduction to ADTs and their uses. I'm looking forward to using it in my projects going forward. 

Deconstructed recursion

The last two weeks of assignments in my classes have been about recursion.  This week for our assignment we had to rewrite a linked list class so that each method used recursion.  

Adding and Removing made the most sense.  It was easy to find the bad cases and then call the method again.  I used a helper function for each method, made it easier to comply with other parameters from the assignment.

I'm still confused on the formatting of some things.  I had used a few else statements after the if statement that was funding the base case, but had to remove most as it was causing an endless loop.  

I also had to rewrite the reverse method a few times until I remembered to include a temporary counting variable.  Will have to find more leet code problems to test myself going forward.

Parallel Problems

I've been working on a chess idea for the AT Proto, and now it turns out my final project for my Intro to CS class is to build a chess variant program.   

On the plus side I inadvertently designed at least one part of my program a month before my class even began, but it also means I need to redirect some energy into rethinking how I am gonna structure the game.  

Should be fun 

Overcomplicating Recursion

As I study recursion and begin applying it in my homework, I notice some similarities, or at least tenuous connections between recursion steps and troubleshooting.

IT support should work on the basis of elimination of a class of issues at a time, until you drill down to the root issue.  I recommend reading DevOps Troubleshooting by Kyle Rankin for more on this subject.

Recursion looks to eliminate a choice, usually between two options, until it returns your root cause, or base case.  

I can't comprehend this List

More accurate, would be to say I don't like listening comprehension at the moment.  I'd rather write more verbose code than use it. Which means I need to push myself to use it more and get better with it.  

Right now the issue lays in knowing how to connect certain variables and their respective positions.  I'm sure my upcoming assignments will have need of it and that's frightening.  Oh well, til tomorrow. 

Never Unpickle Unknown Data

Title is from a recent lecture.  But a good piece of advice when learning anything programming/technology.  Implicit trust of objects and code is an even scarier proposition with all the garbage auto-complete code that is out there right now.  

Let's go to Rio

Came across a saved medium article that talked about a framework called Rio.  It's all python, giving the ability to write full web apps in python.  Unlike Flask, no HTML/CSS or JavaScript needed.  I'm thinking of trying it out to develop more python skills without needing to detour for the html/css stuff.  

Ideation Abounds

Found an interesting book I had saved.  140 simple python programs.  Gave me an idea for my portfolio site. Might make it a randomizer button that loads one of the simple programs side by side within the code. 

Group Projects

One of my favorite things we've done in my Intro to CS classes is having code reviews with small groups over a few assignments.  I've found them to be incredibly interesting and helpful.  Getting to see others approach things like doc strings and class inheritance helps contextualize a lot of what the instructors teach.  

Reading over and over

Because I've taken a lot of personal steps to learning programming and coding over the years, I've also had the same concepts presented to me in a wide variety of ways.  

It's easy enough to follow along with writing your own scripts from a video tutorial or book, but for me, I think it's limited my lateral thinking for code.

Searching through searches

Working on some homework to modify bubble sort and insertion sort functions.  Was able to get them mostly done.  Still trying to figure out how to sort case insensitive lists to finish up.  

Silly starts to silly careers

I've had my silly little flask test site up for a month now.  I enjoy going to my star wars jokes page everytime. I'm following along with Flask Web Development by Miguel Grinberg.  Picked it up in a Humble Bundle a few years ago.  

Objects are objects

So far, this second intro course seems to have hit a wall in my brain.  Objects make sense to me, and yet, manipulation and use just don't yet.  I'll have to push through this soon but it's my least favorite time of learning.

API calls from inside the house

A big part of my current idea is using a public API to get info on specific mods.  Once I implement the calls I'll do a simple cli command to get the output to start, then try and build a webpage to show it.  

Python

I've been learning the Python programming language for about 3 years now.  My best progress has come from Al Sweigert's Automate the Boring Stuff and my intro classes at Oregon State.  

Object Oriented Programming still eludes a foothold in my brain but it is coming along with each new lecture and assignment.

I started working on my first little web app using Flask last month and hope to finish by end of Q1.