#i took a coding class my 2nd semester. first experience with coding. it was in C. i LOVED it.

[orcelito]

Actually it is SO weird to me to remember that I was an engineering student and that later on I had been pursuing a minor in statistics

I may be a IT & com person in the end, but I do have the foundations of engineering and statistics in my brain too. Wild !

[its8simplejulesblog]

Did I Ever Tell You About The Time I Got Stranded in An Airport In China?

It’s true. I was utterly alone. I mean in retrospect I wasn’t, there were hundreds of people in that airport. The difference, they spoke native Chinese and I didn’t. My family members have always been avid travelers, to the point where my mom let me, 20 at the time, travel to China alone. Of course, I was meeting up with people when I got there, but the travel part was alllllllll me. So naturally, things had to go wrong. 

So here’s the sitch. Before my brother was born, during the dark ages of minimal internet, my mom joined this online group of moms that were expecting around the same time so they could ask questions and go through the experience of being pregnant for the first time together. My mom really clicked with a woman named Sandie in the group who happened to be from Australia. As we grew up, our families became really close. We would meet up with them in Florida all the time. 

Eventually, we decided we would ship ourselves over to Australia for Christmas/ New Years, but that’s a different story. 

More background information: My dad helped start a robotics team 21 years ago, and has become really well known in that community so he’s friends with everyone. We were contacted while we were in Australia to come meet up with another family who is really involved in robotics internationally so we went to have dinner with their family. They are an INCREDIBLE family. You know the type where they always have a ridiculous story for everything you just can’t believe it’s real? That’s what they were like. Anyway, the mom started talking about how they were opening a robotics lab in China and they take students over to teach the kids about programming and lego league and just to be pen pals; and, if you know my family at all, I immediately invited myself to go. I really was like “oh I should go with you,” out loud, and my mom looked at me and instead of saying no, she looked at this lady and she said “yeah, Julia is learning Chinese, she could go with you.” and the lady just said “yeah! ok” and I was going to China...alone haha. 

Flash forward and I have to take two flights to go to China. The International flight goes sickeningly smooth. I have absolutely 0 issues, and my whole family is extremely relieved, BuT WaIT, there’s more. When I go to take the domestic flight to Fuzhou, the province that we were going to be “touring” I see that the flight is canceled. There’s an announcement over the loud speaker but I’m already panicked and it’s in rapid fire Chinese so I go to the desk instead. The lady at the desk is trying to be patient with me, but I’m clearly already freaking out and her English is broken. She manages to tell me that there was a bad wind storm so they had to postpone a lot of the flights. 

Okay, postpone..that isn’t so bad, right? ALSO WRONG, it’s at this exact moment that my phone’s wifi cuts out entirely, so it’s survival mode now. I’m crying on the floor of the Shanghai airport when I hear actual English for the first time in forever (I’m apparently really good at accidental Frozen references) but I FLY towards whoever is speaking English. The culprit turns out to be these 2 guys from Canada. One of them speaks fluent Chinese and they’re helpful for about 5 minutes before they have to abandon me because their flight was rescheduled. So, we’re back to square one. 

At this point, they announce that the flight is cancelled and I want to die, but the good news is my wifi comes back on. I immediately text my mom and my uncle, who my aunt met when she was in the Peace Corps in China so he starts a call with his entire family that lives in China apparently because I don’t recognize any of these people at all. The only thing they can tell me to do is to talk to a flight attendant so that’s what I do. 

Imagine a group of really cute and young sorority girls hanging out when they’re approached by someone that..is just completely a mess. Yeah that’s what it was like when I went over to them. I got one of the girls to help me and again, her English was about the level of my Chinese at the time, so together we were only slightly above idiot. She tells me that the Chinese airport doesn’t let foreigners stay at the onsite hotel, so I would be able to go with her and her friend once she got off of her shift to go to a hotel. 

SOUNDS SUS doesn’t it, but when you’re desperate, you’re desperate. When the flight attendant gets off of her shift I go with her to the parking garage because she booked a hotel for me. When we finally get there, this 25 year old Chinese Troy Bolton looking man whips his car around and we get in with him (completely safe, how could you not trust Chinese Troy Bolton). We drive about 30 minutes through Shanghai and honestly, it’s beautiful. It was one of those circumstances in life we’re you’re looking at the city lit up at night and you really can’t believe you’re there. It was probably one of the scariest, yet most memorable experiences of my life. 

We pull into the hotel and since I finally had native speakers with me, things were going a lot smoother. The flight attendant was talking with my uncle on the phone about scheduling me a flight for the next day and she talked to the lady in the lobby about my room. At this point, I knew her pretty well because, surprise, she was actually 30 years old and had a daughter and I thought that was SO CUTE. I gave the flight attendant a hug and thanked her friend, and it was just me again. 

Here’s the best part of this entire story. The only hotel they could book me in was, wait for it, a honeymoon suite. A HONEYMOON SUITE. The hallways of the hotel were covered in mirrors and the carpets were covered in flowers. Everything smelled like drugs and smoke and clearly everyone was having the time of their lives. The bathroom in the room, completely see through, the bed had a HUGE mural of Barbie’s face above it and the curtains had minnie mouse on them and I don’t know how that’s romantic at all, but you can’t make this shit up haha. If you think I’m lying, here’s a lil (horrible) photo I took of the curtains. If you want to see video, ask me in person. 

At this point, I am way past delirious. I took a shower and time ceased to exist. I was so jet lagged and confused. I called my mom and after I hung up with her I immediately fell asleep. A solid 2 hours later I woke up and SCREAMED because my body clock was so off, I thought it was the next day and I had missed my next flight. I called my mom crying again, and she told me it had only been two hours so I went back to bed. When I finally woke up at the right time my uncle, god bless this man, got on the phone with me and helped me talk to the people at the desk. They got a cab for me and I trudged back to the airport. 

2nd times the charm, except, I need to get my boarding pass printed out at the help desk, which has a line of about the entirety of the Chinese population. Fun fact about China too, they don’t know what a straight line is. This is just fact, they just cut straight to the front and shove each other out of the way. This took me way too long to realize, and after I stood in this line for about 2 hours, I realized that I was going to have to assimilate. So there I was, a puny stick of a human, elbowing grown Chinese men out of my way to get this pass while my uncle and 300 relatives are on the call with me. 

I get to the the desk and surprise, the person is not helpful at all so I do what any actually insane person would do and I just continued walking my way through security to the gates. I get filtered into bag check of which, I don’t even have a bag so I just walk up to the desk anyway to see if anyone else can help me. 

After the longest 5 minutes of my life my SAVIOR of a 22 year old tiny little man decides to give me his attention. I don’t know HOW. I don’t. Know. How. But he manages to print a boarding pass for me and my soul left my body because at this point I had 30 minutes to get to my flight so I thank him and SPRINT and I mean really book it through security to the plane. I finally made it. 

Granted, the trip was entirely worth that stress. The kids I met in China were incredibly kind. They called me a Disney Princess and wrote me love letters and gave me hugs even though it was clear I didn’t know shit about coding. It was just amazing to be there as a friend and role model for them. I stood in front of them and spoke Chinese and encouraged them to keep learning English and it was the most grounding experience of my life, because it was clear that they didn’t have much. 

We went to five cities while we were there to tell the kids about lego league and cooperation and teamwork. I sat in on meetings with school board professionals and on interviews with students that wished to continue their education abroad in America. I learned so much about the systematic education there and there is nothing I want more than to go back there. The kids have already invited me back to their homes, and I have never met anyone more welcoming and kind. So think twice before you make jokes about the Corona Virus. 

At the end of the day, this trip defines what I want to do. There is nothing like stepping entirely out of your comfort zone to explore. There is nothing like shocking a bunch of Chinese men with your ability to use chopsticks. There is nothing like putting aside biases and language barriers and simply treating people like people. Everywhere I go, I think of that place as a new home to me, and I can’t wait to be home there again.

Also..the next semester when I got back, we learned the airport and travel unit at school in Chinese class, such is life I guess. 

Here are some pictures from China. 

-Julia 

[codengers]

HOW TO MAKE IMPLEMENTATION BETTER

Basically, I already wrote this article on Dev.to community. Dev.to is one of the best communities for Web development and Github but not for programming that’s why I’m writing again here.

This one is a combination of two articles. Yeah, previously I wrote the article in 2 parts. In this article, I shared my 2 and a Half year of coding experience and discussed on how you can make your implementation better or design better. In the 1st part, I focused on purely coding means about how you can make coding implementation better and in the 2nd part, I focused on both i.e. coding and designing.

And one more thing this one is going to be a long article so take a seat with a cup of coffee and enjoy reading.

So let's get started.

Part-1

It’s about almost a 2 and a half year from now when I choose to start code or you can say I heard about programming during taking admission in my college. Before that, I did not know what is coding or programming/programming language even I don’t know coding’s C. Believe me, it’s true. Now in present time, I’m in 2nd year. Yes, I’m a college student. So let’s go back to our topic. So The time when I took admission in college and got a bunch of books. This time I’m so excited and just start looking at the content of books one by one and in last I got a book which for Programming in C language. Yes, my first programming language is C. After seeing content a short description of some chapter and a bunch of code. Now I’m afraid first I thought about drop but the working of computer and lots of applications around us forced me towards learning. That’s why I join a coaching class to learn C language 15 days before my 1st-semester class. Yes in just 15 days I learn C language. And these 15 days are the one why I fell in love with programming. Daily 1 hrs I read some theory part and after that try to code. But as you know it’s not so easy as I thought. But I didn't give up and try harder. And Now I’m able to implement code more efficient. So I just observe what problem I face and make a list which later one by one I’m gonna explain.

First of all before going to the main idea which is quite basic and generally everyone know about it. But during our coding, we miss them due to which we can’t implement very well that’s why it’s important to make them clear. So before start writing codes did you ever thought about some technical words like program, programmer, instruction, code, syntax etc.

Just a simple question I wanna ask you “Do you know what they are actually are?” “What is the basic meaning of these words?”

For simplification just imagine a scenario. You have a task which is given by your superior to teach guy basic of programming but the problem is that he never heard about it and you have to teach programming to a non-geek person, then how will you gonna manage that. Just take a break and think once then start reading remaining.

So now let me explain what are these from my point of view.

Program: If you Google it we will found “A program is a specific set of ordered operations for a computer to perform”. Ok, but what is the real role or to better understanding how will you correlate with our daily life. So let’s take an example from our daily life most of the time our parents/teacher ask us to do a certain task and then we start doing that as they said. Similarly, the same thing a computer does. What you have written in it (in code) takes it as an instruction and follow it all the way at the end and give you some result.

Programmer: Now the second point which comes up is What is a programmer or who are they? So the answer is that simple “ a person who can write some lines of codes or give some instruction through a programming language to get their desire output is well known as a programmer.” Now again this one is a standard definition so what is the simple definition. If you through the definition you will find that instead of asking who is a programmer? All we have to ask actually what a programmer does? Think about it before going through my words. Actually, when you ask this type of question almost 98% of people go through the standard definition. So what they actually do? Then answer is that simple like others(e.g. A mechanical engineer design, construct machines or a builder make a home, offices to stay comfortable, work efficiently, etc.) they also try to contribute on the basis of his knowledge to simplify things in computer world or the technical world.

Now come to our next point INSTRUCTION: What instruction is all about? Simply it is like an order to do things in a given specific way. Does it sound weird or not ?? Let’s take another example. You are going to the office or school or for any other work during this journey a stranger came to you and ask for help “Can you tell me in which direction I can find subway station? As I’m lost.” So now gonna be 2 possibilities 1st one is you know and the 2nd one is no I’m sorry. Now if you know the way then you can guide him “How to reach station” but if you don’t then you will tell him you also don’t know the correct way to reach the station. Then he will go and ask for help to any other. So in both case, if you see he will do the thing as you directed to him. So what you will say to him he will take as a command and follow that. Hope now the point is clear.

So now our next point is Code. Now the question is What is a code? Hmmm, A code is what programmers do. Better, or not. LOL just kidding.

Actually, if you think about it you will see it’s a tough point or question. Think of it and for once because it does a very important role when you start writing a program. When you go deep inside the standard definition

“Computer code or program code is the set of instructions forming a computer program which is executed by a computer. … This source code is translated into machine code by a compiler or interpreter so that the computer can execute it to perform its tasks.”

you will found the there are 2 meaning of this definition. A 1st definition will be according to you or a programmer what is he wants as an output. 2nd will be according to what you write inside the code computer will give output.

Now again take a break and think which one is right 1st one or 2nd one ??

So if read it, again and again, you will find both 1st and 2nd are the partial definitions. Then What is the right definition ??? Let’s see.

First, if we write a code lets take an example a program of adding 2 number then we give simply give 2 number as input then want an output lets say as C but the computer gives the other output lets say D means you did not get a desirable result. Now as a programmer you will start thinking the code you wrote it seems right but the why computer does not get that way in which you thought means he understands different meaning or point so you have to write code in such a way that computer will get what you think overall you need to modify in your code. So the definition of code will complete when we sum up both point i.e. point 1 and point 2.

For now part 1 I’m taking a break or it will be so long because of this become boring too.

One more point I wanna discuss with you i.e. generally many of us start giving up and stop coding because some of them think it’s so hard and they are not made for it let’s try something else or ever some of them think they have no prior knowledge about it or they belong to a different field. Then I wanna just say one thing is that you all are wrong and try to give up because you don’t want to leave your comfort zone that’s it. Then you will never ever get anything because to get something you have to leave your comfort zone and need a dedication for that to learn.

To learn code you need only 3 things which are listed below:-

A desire to learn.

Confidence that you can do it.

Hard work / smart work.

Believe me, only these 3 things need to become a programmer nothing else needed. If you have then congrats. You just move one step forward towards our programming world. And soon you will see how much beautiful it is. So I just wanna say

Welcome to our beautiful and creative world

From here 1st part ends and now 2nd starts.

Part-2

In Short Part 1

In the 1st part, I shared my of the coding journey how I start, how to make the code more efficient. And discussed some basic key concepts like program, programmer, instruction, code, syntax etc. what is standard definition and what is the real meaning of these key concepts or you can say differentiate between standard definition and real-world meaning.

Now let’s come to the present and discussed some more thing have some important role. But before going to the main idea I have a list of questions which you have to ask with yourself. These questions are not language based or field specific. And you do not have to post anywhere so, don’t worry just go for this question.

Are you ready to learn programming/coding

If you are a beginner then which language you are going to choose and why?

Why do you want to learn programming/coding? You want to learn because it’s sound cool or you really have some interest?

How’s your code going to help in our daily life?

Are you able to correlate what you learn with your daily life?

How will you tackle when you or get a programming problem?

How you overcome that problem?

What is some daily life example like any computer software or application name written in that language?

How are you gonna use it for your benefits?

and so many questions like this you have to ask with yourself and these basics key concepts will help you to become a good programmer or make your implementations better. Generally, when we get a problem or an idea that time we directly start thinking about the problem’s solution like if we talk about a question of adding 2 numbers asked from C language or a problem related to design something we directly start thinking about like in C how many variables we are going to use or if talk about in design we directly start working on design without making a blueprint or a test design. Now, this one is the biggest mistake generally beginners do that’s why they can’t implement code efficiently and the computer gives them a bonus result i.e. error or give a bad design as an output. And this one also creates confusion and sometimes due to the confusion they can’t write whole code i.e. after a few steps they start thinking about what was the next steps and this will end up on irritation. Due to this from my point of view, it’s a bad choice or method. Still, most of you think why this method is wrong? If this method is wrong then what is the right way and also tell us what are the disadvantages of that method? First, we look over what are the disadvantages of this method.

Disadvantages :

When we write code directly on the computer in this way we do two things at a time. 1st we think about the logic or design and at the same time we also implementing that logic and this creates confusion or sometimes it’s a breakpoint and we did not know what will be the next step.

If you think in this method makes you a good coder/programmer then you are wrong. Because 1st it makes your debugging skill weaker due to which when you get an error you are not able to understand where is the error in the code and how to fix it.

In so many companies interview, they will not provide you any laptop or computer they will give you a pen and paper to write code or design on that paper. So now in this way you can’t implement better and do some silly mistakes due to which there is a chance of your elimination.

You will always have confusion after writing code on paper when you will get any. i.e. lack of confidence.

Now comes what you have to do or How you have to proceed:

So these are the some most important disadvantages you can face if follow that method. Now what you have to do when you get a problem.

DOs:

When you will get any problem you have to read the first problem twice to clear the concept and then start building the logic for that question how you have to proceed then write down the logic on a paper in your own way i.e. in your own pseudo-code then type the logic and run your program.

If you are a beginner and not able to write or not able to understand pseudo-code then I have another way or solution for this.

In this case, I will suggest you write code in your own way or make design freely just think some daily life example. But parallel tries to understand or try to learn how to write standard pseudocode. I suggest you pseudo code because in this way the logic you are trying to build for that because in this way you don’t have to write the whole code. In just a few steps you will able to give the whole idea and this will helps you in future like when you will get a job or will work for any organization or during online contests.

For more and important points I will suggest you an article “The secret of great programming” is written by Ravi Shankar Rajan on Medium from this article you can make yourself a good article and get motivated.

Hope you like the article and will be helpful for you.

Thank You for reading.

Keep learning.

Happy Coding.

Here the real link of Dev.to community of these two articles :

HOW TO MAKE IMPLEMENTATION BETTER: Part 1 Abhishek Nov 30 ’18 ・6 min read there! I’m Abhishek this one is my first article, so hope you gonna like it. Or you…dev.to

How to make implementation better Final part Abhishek Feb 20 ・4 min read In the 1st part, I shared my of the coding journey how I start, how to make the code more…dev.to

[nyullama-blog]

Internship Blog 3

So it’s been almost a full semester.

Teaching little kids has been an experience I will never forget. I have a brand new respect for my teachers. Some of the schools were easy. I taught three 2nd and 3rd graders at the Town school who were super easy to deal with. They were eager to learn, took to the lessons like ducks to water and gave me absolutely no problems at all. The teacher there loved me, and apparently recommended CodeAdvantage to another school based on the strength of her experience with me

Some of them were rough. Birch Wathen Lenox was rough. It was a class of 13 4rd-5th grade kids that was like trying to teach a pack of wolves.They were rowdy and non-compliant and even the good kids were a serious pain in my ass. I was lead there, and even with a helper and a teacher from the school who knew the kids also assisting, it was a challenge to keep order and teach them anything. My assistant was an undergrad who had taught previously but tended to be quiet. 

Most were in-between. Lycee Francais was the French language school where I was assisting with a Scratch class. The lead teacher was also the curriculum developer, so he did most of the heavy lifting. I was an assistant in the truest sense. I helped keep order, I helped the kids when they needed it. That class went fairly smoothly, procedurally speaking. The problems we had were with trouble kids more than anything else. It was also a large-ish class, 10+ kid who egged each other on. 

British International School was a smaller class, but it was all boys. 8 4th graders. The only other same-sex class was the 3 boys from Town, but that class is small enough to where it wasn’t a problem. I co-lead with another undergraduate. Stephanie had also taught before, but she was better at it than Sam, the guy I taught with at BWL. We did okay at keeping the kids in line, but it was rough with a bunch of boys. The noise level was particularly hard to keep down. 

Finally, PS158 was the only public school on my schedule. It was also the longest class, clocking in at 2 hours, and the only one with anything below 2nd grade. The kids there were qualitatively different than the private school kids. All the private school kids might run their mouths, but they were generally pretty good at staying in line and keeping to their seats. Not so with the public school kids. They were generally less bratty (as in, they didn’t talk back as much), but they were MUCH more physically energetic. Now, that could just be due to the age group. We had multiple kindergarteners and first graders in the group, but it felt very different. Craig, the curriculum developer was also the lead in that class as well, thank goodness. I could not have led that class. I can deal with the older kids, but trying to lead the younger ones would have been too much for me. We had one kindergartener who had never used a computer before, much less programmed. We had to teach him what a mouse was, and reinforce left and right, and help him with the physical dexterity necessary to manipulate it. We often didn’t show up early that class, just so we could run the kids around to tire them out before class. Craig would do programming variants of common games like Simon Says or Freeze Tag while I set up the computers for the lesson. Even then, we’d occasionally take breaks in the middle of the 2-hour session to run them some more. They were, in general, good kids, but they were a LOT to handle.

Overall, I learned a lot from this. Not much about programming that I didn’t already know, but I learned a lot about managing people. There were days when my filters got overloaded and I got sarcastic with the kids. I remember one particular time where I asked a kid at BIS if he could read. The task at hand was to remove one bit of code and replace it with another. I had written the exact bits on the board. All they had to do was erase something like three words, and replace it with another three words. After I repeated the directions three times and pointed out the exact bits a few more times, I finally got to a kid who had his hand raised. He said he wasn’t sure if he did it correctly. So I asked him if he had erased this bit of code, and he said yes. So I pointed at the next bit and asked him if he had typed this bit of code in its place and he replied: “I don’t know.” I was so confused by this response that “Well, can you read?” slipped out before I could stop it. Thankfully only one other kid heard it, but he busted out laughing. Knowing that I had messed up, I immediately went over to help the guy, who was nearly in tears at this point. That was when a lot of my teachers’ behaviors made a lot more sense. I was a frustrating child.

This was a good experience. I can see how teaching and managing are closely related, and how this experience will help me if I ever take up a management position. It reinforced my decision never to have children, reassuring me that it was the right one. I would not do this again, but I am very glad that I did it.

As always, if you have any questions or comments, please let me know.