Empty Before You Fill.

You will have a hard time learning from someone with more knowledge if you already know everything.

It was a nice Morning, you know, the one that you wake up psyched up. Those days when you wake up before your alarm goes off. It was one of those days when I read that specific quote in a book that I had been putting off to read for quite a long time. But as I said previously, I have time and I intend to use it skillfully and artfully.

Learn Python the hard way

I already know some bit of programming, like a tiny drop in a vast ocean 😅. I always feel like a fraud because there is so much more that I need to learn, and not so much time and space to learn it. So I picked up a book called learn python the hard way, deciding to have shoshin, the beginner’s mindset as I go through the book and practice and learn.

My plan is simple, having only four steps to it.

1. Write exercises using my text editor, vim.
2. Run the exercises I wrote.
3. Fix them when they are broken.
4. Repeat.

Warnings, reminders, more warnings and Errors

From the very word go, there are so many warnings and disclaimers. On the first exercise, I am given a reminder that I should have my environment set up already. Furthermore I am warned not to go on if I have skipped that step as I will not have a good time, then warned and reminded that that is the last time they will start an exercise with a warning not to get ahead of myself.

Sidenote from the editor:

I might make a series out of this depending on the next few exercises. I will use pynotes to log things I learn. Right, moving on swiftly.

The beauty of learning python the hard way is I have to literally learn it the hard way. The book uses python2.x while currently the world is at python3.x. The first time I learnt python, it was using python3, so what is happening is I am going to give myself hell because i have to

1. Type the exercise as is in python2

# example1.py (python2)
print "Hello World!"
print "Hello Again"
print "I like typing this." #lol
print "This is fun."
print 'Yay! Printing.' #see what I did there? Pay attention!
print "I'd much rather you 'not'."
print 'I "said" do not touch this.'

1. Loop through the 4 steps mentioned above 👆.
2. Convert the code written to python3.

# example1.py (python3)
print("Hello World!")
print("Hello Again")
print("I like typing this.") #lol
print("This is fun.")
print('Yay! Printing.') #see what I did there? Pay attention!
print("I'd much rather you 'not'.")
print('I "said" do not touch this.')

1. Repeat step 2.
2. Convert the code written to python3 with backward compatibility (is this even a real thing?).

# example1.py (python3 with backword compatibility i.e can be run with python2 as well)
from __future__ import print_function

print("Hello World!")
print("Hello Again")
print("I like typing this.") #lol
print("This is fun.")
print('Yay! Printing.') #see what I did there? Pay attention!
print("I'd much rather you 'not'.")
print('I "said" do not touch this.')

1. Repeat step 2.

The end result would be a really strung up programmer, possibly with a lot of rage 😤 to go around but who might have fun and learn so much🤪.

What is living if you cannot take risks and plough through discomfort.

Newton Karanu

I’m a fullstack software developer who loves coffee, travel, adventure, poetry, photography and blogging.