The readings and responses listed here should take you approximately 60 minutes.
To start this assignment, click the button in the upper right-hand corner that says Fork. This is now your copy of this document. Click the Edit button when you're ready to start adding your answers. To save your work, click the green button in the bottom right-hand corner. You can always come back and re-edit your gist.
1. Learning Fluency by Turing alum Sara Simon (30 min)
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Your key take-aways OR how you're going to implement specific points (minimum 3):
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Sometimes part of learn is learning HOW to learn. Although Sara had tried many different hobbies, career paths, and activities, there was always some take away that ultimately became an applicable skill when she finally fell into her coding career. Although she failed previously, she actually put effort into becoming a better learner and realized ways to learn that might have helped her previously in the things she thought she was terrible at, like calc.
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There are similarities in unrelated spheres of the world that give you skills that can be applicable elsewhere. She mentions "Letters to a Young Chef" as a book she was recommended. Although it was about cooking, it taught her principles about discipline, teamwork, and understanding the work of one's predecessors. It basically stressed the thought that learning is difficult but there is a way to make it mentally rewarding and make yourself an "interdisciplinary learner.
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This one is not so much about the story itself aside from the part where she mentions that she took the dive into coding a bit like I'm doing. Obviously this is a big leap and I have some doubts about how good I can be at something I don't know a lot about right now. The fact that she is where it is instills some confidence that it can be done and there is help from those who have gone through a similar situation.
2. How to Use Google to Solve Your Programming Questions by Coding in Flow (15 min)
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Your key take-aways OR how you're going to implement specific points (minimum 3):
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Knowing how to use the tools option in a google search should be very useful for finding results with a certain timespan. You wouldn't want outdated results from, say, an HTML related query when the tools avilable may have changed drastically since it was written.
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The word exclusion symbol seems like it could be useful if you're searching something maybe a little less common and there is a much more common but similar sounding issue that most of the results are referencing. By excluding certain words, you may be able to reduce the number of "incorrect" hits for your issue.
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I will definitely try to read MORE posts in the future. It seems that in coding there is often not just one right answer and that doing this could open my mind to the best way to do something and also what the alternative options may be.
3. Do Experienced Programmers Use Google Frequently? by Umer Mansoor (10 min)
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Your key take-aways OR how you're going to implement specific points (minimum 2):
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It seems that it can take many searches to write just a bit of code, especially if you're learning to use the language or tools for the first time.
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It is more useful to use a combination of your knowledge and googling skills rather than just blindly serching and taking whatever you find at face value and pasting it in.
4. 20 Google Search Tips to Use Google More Efficiently by Joseph Hindy (15 min)
- Briefly describe (in your own words) each of the tips below AND provide an example of a search that captures the sentiment of the tip
- Tip 2: You can narrow the result of your searches if you specify the specific way your words are formatted, likely reducing number of non-useful results.
- Tip 3: This can reduce results that are similar to yours but not quite the same but excluding keywords that don't fit.
- Tip 4: This will constrain your results to a particular website.
- Tip 9: Doing an OR search lets you search mutiple things at once, at times when either result may be helpful.
- Tip 13: When searching, use terms that are more likely to be words listed within sites rather than coversational phrasing.
- Tip 14: Try to narrow down results by cutting out extraneous words. Again, you are looking for key terms rather than having a conversation.
- Tip 17: It's good to try to think of other ways people may decribe an issue if the way you are phrasing it isn't returning the results you are looking for.
If you have any questions, comments, or confusions from any of the readings that you would an instructor to address, list them below: