Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Algorithms and YouTube

No cohorts for c950 Data Structures and Algorithms II! That cost me $70 to get in some practical python 3 practice. On the advice of another student, I purchased a course (Jumpstart Python by Talk Python) that walked me through 10 programs. Most of it was solid but I ran into a few issues where he didn’t mention a line so my code didn’t work until I compared what I had with the GitHub and found the bit left off. One of the programs was outdated because the website he was scraping had an update. So he reconciled that by adding a note to use other code instead which made me not want to recommend the course to others ... for $70 a pop, you can redo 5 minutes of video!

It seems to be part of that issue I’ve been having where people explain things as if I already knew what they knew ... from books to lectures to people on slack. He assumed everyone watching could see new code and translate it into whatever he was talking about. I couldn’t ... This weird tendency to assume I know the answer to the question I just asked is sooooo rampant in BSCS that I started to avoid asking questions. Every once in a while I’ll mention that the explanation would be helpful to someone who knew more than me but it’s often followed by more unhelpful advice. More often than not, I regret having bothered.

I decided that one of the things I’m going to do is make some YouTube lectures for this (and other courses eventually). This one is pretty important because we otherwise have no help unless we manage to magically mesh something together, submit it, and get it returned for revisions. That’s the ONLY time a mentor is allowed to look at your code which is a horrible way to learn DSA2, the most important course in ANY CompSci program. This will have the added bonus of helping me convince WGU that I want that teaching degree; I figure I can include a link to my channel as part of my application.

Anyway, I started being more active in the Braille community. I’m hoping to take on some projects once I graduate BSCS. The Library of Congress still hasn’t released their Nemeth certification course for UEB yet so I’m part of a growing number of rogue transcribers. But, I need to keep those skills fresh!

I’m thankful for chocolate covered strawberries. Long story, lol.




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