100 Days of code – 30% complete

A whole month of code!

I’ve seen so much progress already. Little things that used to take me 5-10 minutes are starting to be automatic. I feel like I’m spending a lot more time thinking about logic and actually coding, and less time debugging and researching. This probably means that I need to aim higher and work on harder problems, but I’m also still trying to learn statistics.

If you’re trying to get better at coding, but you don’t want to do a full 100 days of code, I recommend doing at least 30 days of code. Before this challenge, I’d try to get into coding, make some good progress, then hit a metaphorical wall. I’d try for some time to keep coding, but I’d eventually lose interest. In the past 30 days, I’ve hit these walls over and over again, but the simple time commitment keeps me going. I’m also finding that these barriers aren’t actually that tough, and the problem that stumped me one day is trivial the next day.

For the past few days, I have been working on Project Euler Problem 54. This problem isn’t really new to me:
Given 2 poker hands, determine who has the winning hand.

I had to build the same program when I took C. I didn’t do all that great, I think I got a B- on the project. This time though, I’m writing it in Python (which is easier) and I don’t have a deadline.

Every day, I think I’m almost done with the program, and every day I find a new requirement that takes about an hour to implement. I’m not complaining though – I’m spending time each day actually writing code and thinking through solutions. Also, this project is finally big enough for a class to make sense! I’m still not sure whether this is a truly Pythonic use for a class, but it seems to work fine so far. Of course, this also forces me to deal with calling different class methods throughout the program!

We’ll see whether I can get this poker hand checker done in a few more days! Happy coding!