Well, it’s been a while since my last update and a lot has been happening with this blog behind the scenes (bye, bye 1&1 hosting and hello to the wonderful Squirrel Hosting) and with myself.
In short, I am going in to hospital for an operation on 6th June which is a little bit nerve-wracking, exciting (strange…but this op will vastly improve my quality of life) and unknown – I haven’t had an operation since my tonsils were removed when I was six and so I don’t know what to expect, I only have Holby City to go on! As a consequence of this, I have two weeks off work – time off beforehand for preparation & relaxation and then time off afterwards to rest & recuperation. I am putting my foot down now and saying that these two weeks will be for self development, learning new things and essentially NOT SITTING AROUND AND WATCHING DAYTIME TV (like I always find myself doing when I have the odd day off!)…except for Pointless, I love Pointless and so that’s my only exception.
So, I have created an account on Codecademy and am slowly making my way through the Python course. At the time of writing, I am up to lesson 8 on Loops and I am thoroughly enjoying it, it’s such a great way to learn a new language. I have written C++ and C# code in the past and so am not a complete beginner, but it’s great to start right at the beginning and learn a new language from scratch. It’s a bit of a revelation not to have to add a semi-colon at the end of a line of code…it feels a bit naughty!
When I have completed the Python course, I hope to undertake a small project of my own. My main motivation for learning Python is for screen-scraping and data extraction purposes and so I’d like to start a project to help me to gain experience in these areas. I will of course keep blogging about my progress and the new discoveries that I make.
The fortnight of self development starts now…
AdeSquared 
Hi there. I tried Codecademy too, but felt that Udacity’s CS 101 (Intro to programming) was way better. They have like 2-3 min videos and quizzes in between. You should give it a try 🙂 Or you could complete the Codecademy one and then try CS 262 (Building a web browser) which is a slightly harder course.
That sounds like a great idea, thanks for the heads up!
Reblogged this on NeverFriday and commented:
Codecademy is a solid way to learn programming
[…] it was only a couple of weeks ago that I set myself a challenge to complete the Python course on Codecademy and I did it – I completed the Python track and it was fantastic! I was given […]