The Good & Geeky Way to Learn Coding Skills
Over the last few months I’ve been learning to code. I started with the lessons available from Mosh Hamedani. I started with learning JavaScript and SQL followed by Git and GitHub. Git is not a coding language but it’s something you need to know about if you’re going to learn to code. It’s a version control system which code is also used to collaborate with each other. Git is also useful for writers of any sort. Having all of your versions of whatever you have written is the ultimate backup strategy. It is very geeky but we like that sort of thing.
100 Days of Code with Angela Wu
Angelo Wu is a medical doctor and also a coder. She is excellent in how she teaches code. She explains everything as if we are 10-year-old children. She’s not like some teachers who start off very basic but quickly get to a stage where they expect the learner to know nearly as much as they do about the code they are teaching. Sometimes I find it a little slow but I’m prepared to put up with that because overall I am learning what I need to learn.
Why Am I Learning to Code?
I still don’t really know how going to be up to use the code skills on learning. I doubt if it would be possible for me to get a job although I could do freelancing work. Self-employed to do coding to solve problems. There must be something I could do to make money with this new skill set.
Practice and More Practice
It’s all about turning up and getting your bum into the seat. If you turn up each day and practice your coding skills then eventually it makes sense. What I learned previously in other courses have made a difference with this course by Angela Wu. She is big on teaching via challenges. So far, with most of the challenges I’ve been successful in completing the challenge without assistance. In the hangman challenge I needed a bit of help, but that was because I had to take a couple of days off because of other things I needed to do. A couple of times I tried to sit down and do some learning, but my head was just not working due to tiredness.
Typescript on Top of JavaScript
Mosh has recently brought out another course. This new course is about Typescript which is a superset of JavaScript. I really need to get my head around JavaScript more before I jump into this course. I think I still need to go back to JavaScript even though I’m enjoying Python more. Sometimes I think it would be nice if someone could invent something more visual and block orientated. Something like Shortcuts with its ease of use. But within that it would give you all the complexity you find in a full programming language. So if you want to do a while loop, a for loop or an if statement you just drop in the block required her and fill in the blanks. Sometimes I think the programmers like to keep it as arcane as possible with the language syntax. It kind of gives programmers special powers, superpowers.
Learning to Use Logseq
Logseq is a little bit like Obsidian, but for some reason that I have taken to it much easier. Logseq is list based as in each block is a list. You can organise things by indenting and out denting the data. In fact it’s really important to do this because it has an effect upon how the data is retrieved when your making queries.
I’ve also been comparing Logseq with Craft. Craft is prettier and is a proper application. One of the best things about Craft is the synchronisation across platforms. Whatever data I put into whichever version of the app, so either on iOS or on the Mac is available everywhere. It’s been more difficult to set this up on Logseq. With Logseq you need to use a synchronisation service like Git and GitHub. It works but sometimes it doesn’t work perfectly. You have to be really careful about not working in the same document within Logseq on more than one platform at the same time. I’ve already hit upon some conflicts which needed to be sorted out. On iOS you need to use an automation to bring the data in from GitHub. This activates actions in the application Working Copy. The trouble is, the shortcuts don’t always work. Sometimes it’s better to open up working copy first and do the pull to bring the data in from GitHub manually. Just to make sure the synchronisation has actually taken place.
In a lot of ways I prefer using Logseq to using Craft. First of all Logseq is free. It seems to do the wiki style linking a lot quicker and easier than is with Craft. There is much more configurability and personalisation available within Logseq. It is definitely more geeky to get it to do these things, but that’s half of the fun.
New Capabilities in Craft
One thing that’s better in Logseq is how it displays code. I can get it to display an entire block of code and it also puts in the line numbers for the code. I’ve found Logseq to be invaluable in my learning process.
