Real Life coding problems and solutions

I am seriously thinking of Joining CodeAcademy. I like the self contained environment as it provides as it cuts to the chase and removes the initial barrier involved in learning a new language.

However, after jumping around and taking a few lessons here and there, as well as reading reviews on other sites, I am a bit worried that CS may not be for me.

Let me explain: I have been coding for 20 years, but I have been more of a troubleshooter than a code monkey.
I know enough to edit and modify existing code for my own purposes but I have never built a complete applications. I have been part of teams where I spec’d the application, the programmers made the building blocks and I guided it through completion, but I have never built one by myself.
In the 90’s /early 2000 I worked with a .com company, later, after a health related “retirement” I started working with Open Source software, in lieu of the team I no longer had.

All of this allowed me to make a living and focus on what I do best, hiring programmers as necessary, etc. but I feel like I am handicapped by my ignorance about building something from scratch.

CA looks great for a classroom environment or for an experienced programmer to learn the syntax for a new language, but I am afraid that for me it may not be enough.

I’d like to hear from other “singletons” that have learned coding on CA and how they approached this issue.
Is there a point in these courses when a student leaves the “gated community” inside CA behind and can take a class on how to solve a real life problem using the skills learned therein?

By the way, I have to say that I really appreciate the format of CA, insofar as most of the classes (all of the ones I looked at so far) had written instructions. I am really tired of listening to the video rambling of some guy with an accent other than mine (and trust me: My Italian accent makes me sound like Father Guido Sarducci) and continuously have to skip backwards and forward to learn some concept I didn’t get the first time around. Very refreshing.

== CC

3 Likes

Self-learning can be a vacuum, or rather, like being in a vacuum. The questions come from within, via our own precociousness or confusion, both of which can be credited as the genes of learning. It’s still a vacuum because the only feedback we get is from our code working, or not working. In either instance we are the beholders of, "why?; and, “how.”


There are a number of ways to enter the coding world. Mine came from HTML, though many years prior I loved coding in BASIC in many flavors of home computers, beginning with the Timex Sinclair, a language I wish still existed, in the same hard logic environmentt.

It was a beauty to behold given the sparseness. The syntax was, one supposes the precursor to Integer Basic which is the closest I’'ve ever found similar (don’t ask me to look for it today). The Z80 was at the center of it all. Previous to this I don’t believe there was much available to consumers, and if there was, it had the same CPU.

The Sinclair used tokenized BASIC which meant no parsing of typed code. To enter a keyword you found it on the keypad and entered it, with or without keyboard modifiers. The end result was a limited keyword environment, much like early Pascal boasted of. In either event there was a lot going on in the background and there was no C in those days (I don’t think… It evolved out of this, as I understaind.) so that code would be assembler. Z80 assembler.

It was neat that the computer could compile for-next loops or 10, 20 goto 10 loops so they could execute in the background. We could shut off the display update (which even today is a lengthy recursive process) and speed up our math processes, then switch back into display mode to show the outcome (with a print statement). I’m remiss that the keyword doesn’t come to mind, but that was four decades ago. It might have been, fast.

In the earlier BASIC’s we could drop down into USR, which was the assembler environment to speed up our code. Not something we’re going to see today.

Sinclair BASIC - Wikipedia

4 Likes

Well, I’ll be…

Didn’t noticed it at all until you pointed it out and even then my brain wanted to insert the “A” in the middle.

Thanks. I guess they smartly bought codecademy.com and codeacademy.com because I am sure I have typed it wrong every single time (I am a man of many browsers, so I don’t always rely on cached sites).

3 Likes

It makes good sense to squat on domains you don’t want others to have. It keeps them from usurping your brand. The pseudo domain is parked and redirected, I’d suspect.

3 Likes