In the next article I will share with you my first “coding” experience with Mindera Code Academy.
Why such an experience?
As I am a very curious person who loves learning and I agree with the statement that with enough dedication anyone can learn anything, I decided I also would like to “enter” the tech world. I had no previous “tech” or programming background (I studied and worked in finance). Further, I wanted to spread the word and share my experience with you – expats living in Porto, but also with local people, motivate you that it is never “too late”, or that you can do it, too! And maybe helping you to get a new remote, or on-site job that can enable you moving to Porto 🙂 Another reason was to encourage women in tech 🙂
Why Python?
Having the above in mind, I have subscribed to Mindera’s Python Warm Up course intended also for complete beginners. Before the warm up course, I did some introductory Python trainings on Udemy so I am not “completely lost”. Why did I choose Python from so many programming languages? After the brief research I learned that Python is considered as a beginner-friendly programming language, it should be relatively easy to learn, you can “execute” the code directly without any further compilations and it is used in various diverse areas, among others also in quantitative finance. So I was thinking this is exactly what I am searching for.
General information
The warm up course consisted of 8 sessions divided into 4 weeks taking place remote each Tuesday and Thursday between 7pm and 10pm. So no excuse for those working full time 🙂 The teaching language of course I attended was Portuguese, but I was being informed that if non-Portuguese speaking people subscribe, they might also do it in English. Also no excuse 🙂 The cost of this course was 300 euro, but note that it can be fully reimbursed by IEFP (Institute of Employment and Vocational Training), through so called Cheque-Formação + Digital. One more time, no excuse accepted 🙂
What was it about?
After subscription I received all the necessary information via e-mail and was added to Slack group with the other participants we used throughout the course as a communication platform. And all was set up to start this adventure!
- class – During the first class we introduced ourselves (we were around 14 students, out of that 4 women 🙂 ) and met our teacher Marcos. We also installed the necessary tools – Python 3 (in my laic world this is the programming language that will later run programs you will create), Visual Code Studio (in my laic world this is what the programmers call “IDE – integrated development environment” – where you write the code, run it and perform the tests) and also virtual environment (in my laic world, I did not fully understand why do we need this, but I trusted the teacher 🙂 )
- class – During the second class, we jumped into the basic terms, such as Data Types (in my laic world these are the words (called “strings”), numbers (called either “integers” or “floats”) and other types), mathematical operations and we were assigned with first exercise we needed to solve until Monday.
- class – During the third class we continued with other Data Types such as lists, dictionaries, tuples, sets and various operations within them.
- class – In the fourth class we learned if, elif and else statements, for loops, while, range and different methods and functions. We also got another set of exercises we needed to solve until Monday.
- class – In the fifth class we reviewed solutions to some exercises and continued with methods and functions, *args, **kwargs, filter, lambda, maps and classes. Things started to get more difficult and complex, but at the same time more organized.
- class – In the sixth and last theoretical class we learned about inheritance and polymorphism concepts within the classes and Marcos presented us how developers organize the various files and how do they start the project from a scratch. The final project was introduced.
- class – In the seventh class we presented the final project solution we had so far and Marcos advised us on how to continue, what to improve, etc. before we head to the final class to present it.
- class – The eight and at the same time the final class consisted of the presentation of a final project. The final project was about programming a simple game called heroes and monsters where the player chooses a hero and fights against monsters with various weapons until one of them “dies”. The project was assigned rather broadly so there is a space for different solutions and imagination of individual students. We also learned how to upload the final project to GitHub (this is the platform for developers to share their work).
All classes are also recorded so if you failed to participate in any of them, you still have the chance to catch up afterwards.
My feelings during and after the course
I felt first of all proud of myself. I already played around for quite some time with an idea I will start “coding” and subscribe for a bootcamp/course, but at the same time I am playing also with many other ideas and I never realized this one. Until I did the warm up with Mindera. You also need a lot of dedications and giving up on other things in your free time as you suddenly happen to have no free time. I also felt happy after I accomplished all exercises and the final project and when I hit the button “run” and all finally ran without unexpected errors. Sometimes I felt desperate, lost and “stupid”, but more in the next part of an article 🙂
Accompanying materials and hints
During the warm up course I was struggling with many concepts that did not seem so logical for me, but it is all about practice. I practiced either on online python website, or in Visual Code Studio and after typing some functions repeatedly and repeatedly, I finally got to understand the basics. Further, there are so many studying materials and sources of information nowadays, that it is impossible not to find the function, or solution you need. I subscribed to 100 Days of Code: The Complete Python Pro Bootcamp on Udemy and did the lectures simultaneously with the Mindera warm up course. Further, I was simultaneously also reading the book Learning Python by Mark Lutz. One good hint after you already create some lines of code not working properly is to ask ChatGPT 🙂 The guy fixes it instantly and you do not need to waste endless hours. But of course you should understand the concepts, otherwise the whole effort makes no sense.
What’s next?
Now I should receive the official certificate from Mindera for this course. I would also like to finish the Udemy 100 days bootcamp and the book by Mark Lutz. Afterwards I am planning buying the follow-up book Programming Python by the same author and I am thinking to subscribe to another course by Mindera – Generative AI. And then who knows 🙂
I would like to thank Mindera for organizing this type of courses also for complete beginners, for having the chance to participate and I would like to thank our teacher Marcos for his endless patience.
