Following up on yesterday’s technical goals/killers of my soul I also want to talk about my progress this year in coding.
- I will say that jQuery finally makes sense to me (from a coding perspective) and that’s because I finally took the time to sit down and play around with it. And while I’m fond of writing simple constructions and functions, I find that I do better when I can actually read code. Someone who puts code snippets out there and lays them in sequential order is going to be far more beneficial to me than simply trying to put together line after line of functions.
- The Python group hasn’t made a lot of progress in terms of meetings but it actually got me excited to do more work with Python. At this point, I actually think I enjoy working with Python more than with Java or Javascript, both of which were infinitely more familiar to me than Python. (Java was the language I used during my freshman year programming classes, way back in the 1990s.) I thought the whitespace delineation would drive me crazy but it’s actually easy to understand after a few weeks of playing around with it. Also, some of the flexibility with Python surprises me. I’m still learning, of course, but it’s been fun. (It was neat to see Python for Kids the other day, too. I may be using the word “neat” too much.)
As to future programming goals:
- Really, I don’t quite know, but I know I want more occasion to work with both of these. Earlier this year when I went to Startup Weekend, our pitch project involved a website with jQuery. (We had a lot of fun making sliding images and clickable interfaces for our mock-up). I’ve considered building a digital playground just to have reason to work with it, since I have no particular projects in mind. (I’m not really an entrepreneur so much as I am a scientist and technologist.)
- Learn Ruby. At least well enough to read the code when I encounter it.
- Start looking into app development with a greater idea to actual projects. It’s not like I generally come up with unique and original ideas for apps but having the skills to work on them isn’t a bad thing in a market that has serious demand for the ability. The mobile world isn’t going to shrink anytime soon.
