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I am so grateful to Udacity and the CS 101 course. I had tried to learn programming at least three times using different resources. Each time I struggled with b
by frakkingcylons 3y ago
I am so grateful to Udacity and the CS 101 course. I had tried to learn programming at least three times using different resources. Each time I struggled with basic concepts and it seemed like I'd just never figure it out.
Then in 2012, I tried the CS 101 course and finally everything just fell into place. Obviously it just taught me the basics, but I came out of that course with the feeling that I could keep at it and make some really interesting stuff. The next two years were a really exciting time for me as I switched majors to CS and then got a paid internship in 2014 (from a post on Who's Hiring!). I've been working full-time since 2017 and I'm so happy that I was able to break into this industry.
- gnicholas 3y agoThat's a great story! What do you think it was about the course that made it click for you?
- frakkingcylons 3y agoIt’s been so long that I’m on fuzzy on some details. I felt like the explanations of these concepts were really effective: - basic data structures like maps and arrays - encapsulating logic in functions and showing how you can compose them to do cool things. Recursion clicked for the first time. The overarching project was to make a web crawler and I thought that was super interesting. Of course you’re making a toy version but there was enough substance there to keep me engaged. I still think web crawling is fascinating and made a crawler in rust a couple years ago (which was obviously still super basic by real standards).