It’s been a few months since my last post. That’s because I got totally immersed in learning coding, specifically Ruby, far more seriously than I had expected. In the last two months, I got very sick. But now I am back.
First of all, the Capstone Python class on Coursera got postponed from a January start date. It finally started in early April and I have completed it and thus completed the excellent 5-course Python series, taught by Prof. Chuck Severance of the University of Michigan.
While waiting for the Capstone class to start, I stumbled upon the Flatiron School‘s Learn platform which I really enjoyed and wrote about in my previous blog. In no time I found myself being pulled deeper and deeper into Learn. In February, I formally signed up as a fee-paying online student on Learn and have put in a good amount of time everyday (until I got sick.)
Like many of today’s online teaching / learning platforms, Learn has also been going through continuous changes. So not everything is 100% smooth – but then what is 100% trouble-free in life? The bottom line is: I have learned a tremendous amount through Learn. I will write about it in my future blogs.
This entry is in response to Learn‘s assignment question: “Why did you decide to learn software development?”
It may be a while before I will call myself a “software developer,” but I am getting to understand what “software development” means. Computer technology permeates our lives, so we should, and we must, gain some basic understanding of how it works. Programming languages are also (surprisingly) interesting – so why not learn some programming? In a previous post, I argued that every teacher should learn to code a little. I have come to believe everybody should learn some programming, because, as Massimo Banzi, the creator of Arduino, succinctly said:
“… it’s important to be masters of the technology.”
– Massimo Banzi –
Code by Line 