Learning and Frustration

So I’ve been working my way through a Udemy Python course and overall things are going well. A little problem here and there as one would expect when you are learning something new. Most of the time I’ve been able to figure things out without cheating and looking at the instructors answers. Sure there’s been a little Googling but from everything I’ve been reading most programmers do that. I haven’t been blatently copying code from others but I look at similar solutions on sites like StackOverflow and have been coming up with my own version.

A little over a week ago I made it to the first milestone project. A lot of tips were given before starting the project. The instructor basically has you write the functions individually and then you put them together with the main code. Some functions are easy to test by themselves and others require more input. Ok, I admit it, I didn’t really test the ones that required more than a simple input. I’ve been lazy.

Now that I think back that’s rather funny as I started this journey because I want to learn Python to learn about data engineering and software testing! I guess I should have spent a bit more time working through the testing because after trying, taking a break, and now trying some more - my code still doesn’t work properly.

I’ll keep at it. I know if I don’t solve it soon I’ll have to look at the instructor’s version of the code but that bothers me. It feels like cheating. But at some point I’ll have to cut my losses and have a look.

I’m generally pretty independent but over the years I’ve learned:

• It never hurts to ask questions.

• It’s always nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of.

Well, enough of that. Time to get back to it.

John