INCOMPLETE - Check out log-v2.md for my current progress!
Today's Progress
I finished and uploaded the HTML and CSS for a recreation of the homepage for a fictional company called Tea Cozy and everything looks pretty close to the design spec! And the best part? IT'S (somewhat) FUNCTIONAL!
Thoughts 💭
Feeling pretty good about my first HTML/CSS attempt. I've only extensively studied Python up until this point and I'm enjoying checking out some new languages.
Today's Progress
I didn't have time to work on any coding projects, but I grabbed a copy of Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++ by the man himself, Bjarne Stroustrup, and got through Chapter 1: Computers, People, and Programming.
Thoughts 💭
I have done a little hands-on practice with C++ through SoloLearn and Codecademy. After skimming through this book, I have a feeling it's going to be a great help. C++ is the main language I'm interested in, since it has a ton of applications. I'm looking forward to digging into the book a bit more.
Today's Progress
I finished the Responsive Web Design track on freeCodeCamp and am ready to begin the 'Projects' section tomorrow.
Thoughts 💭
I have enjoyed learning HTML and CSS elements, but am feeling a little overwhelmed by the sheer amount of customizations available within CSS. I am looking forward to beginning the projects though and hopefully the practice will give me the opportunity to experiment with various elements.
Today's Progress
I uploaded basic HTML for a Tribute Page I'm doing as part of freeCodeCamp's Responsive Web Design curriculum. I have gone beyond what the requirements call for, as I really want to see what I'm able to produce with everything I've learned so far.
Thoughts 💭
Thinking about beginning the CSS for this project is a little overwhelming. I have a pretty good idea of what I want the final product to look like, now I just need to figure out how to translate that into working CSS. I'm going to take a break for today, maybe read another chapter in Programming: Principles and Practice using C++. I may come back to this project later if the mood strikes me.
Today's Progress
I struggled with the CSS for my Tribute Page today. The sheer amount of ways you can format elements is somewhat mind-boggling and it definitely is intimidating and hard to know where to start. Instead of just getting frustrated and quitting for the day, I spent time going through MDN Web Docs CSS tutorials and browsing Stack Overflow forums. I also did a little work on Codecademy's CSS path, completed all paths on Grasshopper (which included some CSS elements as well), did a few Python challenges on Codewars, started the Python track on DataCamp to continue refining my skills, and began the Web Development 101 program on The Odin Project. If I'm not making progress on projects, at least I'm keeping up with my learning!
Thoughts 💭
So MDN Web Docs are AMAZING. There is a wealth of information for all kinds of languages, along with predefined tutorials for beginners. Additionally, I am enjoying Codewars so far. The challenges really make you think and I love that there are no set requirements for how the challenges must be complete. As long as you pass the tests, your code will pass, but there is allotted time to refactor your code before making your final submission, which allows you to come up with more efficient solutions once you pass the requirements.
Today's Progress
I checked out computer science and programming courses on Udemy, Coursera, Khan Academy, and edX. Utimately, I ended up signing up for four classes through edX: HTML5 & CSS Fundamentals, Advanced CSS, Programming for the Web with JavaScript, and Introduction to C++.
Thoughts 💭
A lot of the websites I listed offer certificates of completion for their courses, but at a cost. There are also skill paths that include several courses with a certificate of completion at the end as well. These could be useful to help me get into an entry-level position until I'm able to start working on a B.S. in Computer Science. Each site offers a TON of courses, along with projects to complete that can be added to a personal portfolio. I also think taking the C++ course as I'm reading through Programming: Principles and Practice using C++ will be helpful. I'm a hands-on learner so if I'm able to practice the concepts as I'm reading about them, I'll probably be more inclined to understand and remember what I'm learning.
Today's Progress
I began learning how to draw shapes with JavaScript through a course on Khan Academy. I created a drawing of a dinner plate with steak, a baked potato with butter, and peas. I am going to continue working through the course today and plan to upload any other projects I end up creating.
Thoughts 💭
Drawing with code is pretty fun so far. Although the drawing I made was created with only two or three different shapes, I had a lot of fun doing it and experimenting. I'm looking forward to learning some more and hopefully will be able to create more complex drawings in the future and learn how to do it more efficiently. Drawing all those peas individually was insane!
Today's Progress
So I didn't have access to my computer today, but I didn't let that stop me! I utilized Codecademy's mobile app to complete review and practice exercises for all the courses I have either completed or am currently enrolled in. Then I used SoloLearn's mobile app to complete three coding exercises in C++ and Python. I'll be finishing off my day by reading Programming: Principles & Practice Using C++ until I fall asleep.
Here's a list of all the Codecademy and SoloLearn courses I've worked on or completed so far!
Thoughts 💭
I absolutely love the fact that there are so many interactive apps and websites available with good content so I don't feel like I just mindlessly scrolled through text for an hour. I'm particularly impressed with SoloLearn's coding challenges. In addition to learning new concepts, these challenges let you actually code solutions right in the app so you don't have to forego the hands-on practice if you don't have access to a computer.
Today's Progress
I decided to do a little Python work today and started working on a Pokémon game using classes and OOP. I also made some more progress in my edX courses as well as a Python course with DataCamp. I'm planning on adding some functionality to the game next.
Thoughts 💭
I really like how versatile Python is. I've worked on so many projects including data analysis, machine learning, NLP, etc. It really is a fun language to work with and is quite a bit easier to understand compared to languages like C++ and Java. I definitely have the most experience with Python and although I'm not sure if I'll use it much in the profession I'm pursuing, I still really enjoy seeing what I can come up with.
Today's Progress
Everyone has off-days and today was no exception for me. Instead of working on projects, I used my time to watch some great YouTube videos from Raymond Hettinger on the SF Python channel and read a bit more in Programming: Principles & Practice Using C++. I also finished DataCamp's Introduction to Python and Intermediate Python courses, so all-in-all, not a bad day.
Thoughts 💭
Although I felt like the material in the two DataCamp courses I completed was a bit below the level of knowledge I currently have, I don't actually see it as a waste of time, or even a negative, because it means I'm learning. And not just learning, retaining, which is generally a huge problem for me when trying to learn anything new. I've subscribed to their site and am going to continue going through the courses to gain as much knowledge as I can. I also posted the code I wrote yesterday for the Pokémon game to r/Python and am blown away by how helpful and supportive the community has been. I got a lot of great tips and pointers on refactoring my code and ended up making a list of the changes I'm going to work on implementing.
Today's Progress
I finished several of DataCamp's courses on Data Visualization today:
- Python Data Science Toolbox (Part 1)
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- Python Data Science Toolbox (Part 2)
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- Pandas Foundations
- Manipulating DataFrames with Pandas
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I grabbed some datasets from Kaggle to look at and decided on using some World of Warcraft survey data to see if I could come up with some interesting correlations/visualizations. Although I only got as far as importing the .csv file into a DataFrame today, I'm planning on working on it tomorrow after I brush up on some Matplotlib and Seaborn skills.
Thoughts 💭
Although data analysis was originally not one of the things I was too terribly interested in when I started coding, I have found that I actually enjoy it quite a bit. Some of the visualizations I've seen from people who have been doing this waaaaay longer than I have are absolutely STUNNING. I'm excited to see what I can come up with and already have some ideas of how I'm going to work with the data I downloaded.
Today's Progress
I finished DataCamp'sMerging DataFrames with Pandas and started working on a World of Warcraft survey dataset. You can view the .csv file here and my code so far here.
Thoughts 💭
Manipulating DataFrames is very much a trial and error process for me right now. I do feel like I'm starting to get the hang of it. I spent hours just transforming the data in different ways to see if I could better understand what each method or function does. I'm not 100% sure what I want to do as far as visualization, but I have a few ideas:
- Stacked bar graph of the Class and Race columns
- Color each bar based on the in-game class color
- Make a pie chart showing the breakdown of the Class and Race columns
As far as comparison within the dataset goes, I've been trying to come up with various correlations to test, but I've been struggling to do any comparisons since the data is all strings and no numerical values. That's mainly the reason why I broke down the Class, Race, and Role columns and added their respective totals to each DataFrame, but I really don't think there's any basis for comparison between the three DataFrames. Hopefully I can come up with something tomorrow, but I'm definitely going to plot the data I have already first so I can get some practice with Matplotlib and Seaborn.
Today's Progress
I finished three more of Data Camp's data analysis courses:
- Introduction to Data Science
- Introduction to Data Visualization with Matplotlib
- Introduction to Data Visualization with Seaborn
I used the World of Warcraft survey data to generate two charts using Matplotlib and Seaborn. The first chart shows a breakdown of the total characters reported by class.
The second chart shows a breakdown of the total characters reported by race.
You can see the code for the charts here.
Thoughts 💭
I enjoy messing around with Matplotlib and Seaborn and finding different ways to visualize data. There are a ton of ways to customize the charts and I plan on taking more advanced tutorials and reading a bit more of the documentation for each module in order to learn how to use them effectively.
Today's Progress
I'm starting to feel a bit sick today, so I didn't have the energy to use my brain in order to work on any coding projects. Instead, I read a little more in Programming: Principles & Practice Using C++ and watched a few YouTube videos. I plan on doing a bit more tomorrow to make up for today if I'm feeling okay.
Thoughts 💭
I've been doing most of my actual coding in Python but I want to start doing a bit more in C++. Once I get further into the book, I plan to start coding along with what I'm learning.
Today's Progress
I decided to try something a bit more challenging today. I'm using GetOldTweets3 to scrape Twitter for tweets to build a word cloud of an individual user's most frequently used words. Unfortunately Twitter's API only allows access to tweets from the past seven days, which isn't enough to generate an accurate word cloud, but this module makes it possible to go as far back as Twitter will allow in the web browser. For my first word cloud, I chose Donald Trump, of course. I feel like the results will be pretty interesting. I did't get too far in my code, as most of my time was spent reading about the modules I was going to need and looking at a few articles with tutorials.
Thoughts 💭
I think the hardest part of this project is going to be cleaning up the text in each tweet. There are Python libraries that can do this for you, but I already struggle a bit with using regex and NLP tools, so I really want to try to do this part myself. I read quite a bit on the subject today, but I need to read a bit more about regex in order to refresh my memory.
Today's Progress
I didn't do much coding today, but I finished DataCamp's Exploratory Data Analysis in Python course.
Thoughts 💭
I lost my job today. I won't get into specifics, but it definitely wasn't fair, nor done in a proper manner. I'm hoping this just means my anticipated career change will begin sooner. I'm still going to continue my #100DaysOfCode progress and build whatever small portfolio I can, then begin applying for some entry-level positions. Maybe I'll get lucky.
Today's Progress
I finished two more of DataCamp's courses, Cleaning Data in Python and Introduction to SQL. I'm planning on working more on my Twitter Cloud project tomorrow.
Thoughts 💭
I learned a ton of ways to clean data in the Cleaning Data in Python course, as well as how to use regex to improve the tidiness. I'm excited to see if I can make these methods work on the text data in my project. I'm not 100% sure how to adapt the rules to remove punctuation, but I'm sure Google can probably help me out there.
Today's Progress
I've been working on a project to create word clouds out of past tweets and was able to finish the code for it, which you can see here. This is a word cloud generated from all of President Trump's tweets from 01/01/2019 - 03/06/2020. Pretty interesting!
Thoughts 💭
This project was a lot of fun to work on, and it was really the first project I've completed completely on my own from start to finish (i.e. scraping Twitter for data, coding, and generating images). I want to continue learning more regex methods as well, because I'd really like to get into some NLP projects in the future.