Today's Progress: Announce commitment to the challenge and read up on tutorials regarding data structures from freecodecamp.org site.
Thoughts: I'm struggling to feel capable in my abilities to code and any self validation on being productive. Looking at possible solutions, I've decided to pursue the 100 days of code challenge and use this repo as a method for work accountabillity and tracking.
Link to work: https://medium.freecodecamp.org/10-common-data-structures-explained-with-videos-exercises-aaff6c06fb2b
Today's Progress: Revisit existing game project and tasks I was responsible for
Thoughts: I dislike the feeling of returning to a project that has been on the back burner for so long that time needs to be spent acclimating myself to the needs of the project or the focus required to be able to do the complex thinking and problem solving required to arrive at a solution. My poor habit of leaving things to the last minute are apparent to me as I write this log entry at 4 in the morning to keep up with my commitment to myself. I will make it a goal to do the hour early in the day to be able to think competently and have a more productive feeling.
Aside from this however, the work done for todays entry revisited old problems I simply patched in to make the proposed dealine on the projects sprints. Having to get use to "good enough" solutions to revisit them are kind of annoying but I guess is part of the learning process. I needed to remind myself of the usage of delegate methods using Ienumerators in c# and learned how you don't always need to return something back in an Ienumerator block by simply using "yield break" to serve as a "return".
Reviewed older project documents created and reassessed a graphical model of the project I created for my own understanding. The hr involved doing some cleanup work on some errors I was encountering in running of the project and placing some defensive coding in certain places.
the real problems and work I needed to do didn't appear obvious to me until the last few mins of the hour. Some funky stuff was happening between a script I wrote and another written by my senior colleague which I will need to tinker with to better understand how their code and my code behave independently and together.
in the meantime, I wil be going to bed. I hope I can curb this habit and stick to a more healthy pattern of completing the challenge.
Link to work: Unity cloud game project: //to be announced at a later time
Today's Progress: Reviewing scripts for the unity game project and understanding the game configuration details
Thoughts: While there has been some improvement with the approach to resolving some previous issues in the unity project, at times, the complexities of the underlying framework can be a hinderence to getting some things up and running. While this is more of a personal gripe from a lack of familiarity with the code base, it can be often time discouraging in feeling like progress has been made when time is set aside uderstanding how all the small moving parts in this complex machine should be working.
After stepping through some foreign code I hadn't written myself, I was able to see how I could improve upon older scripts I had written and implement the more detailed functionality that was outlined in our projects task list. There is still some ways to go before I can test it but at least it's closer to being realized. I learned a bit regarding how to properly check for float's close to 0 using Math.epsilon in unity as well as experimenting with unity's cloud build feature. A luxury feature the team I'm in wasn't taking advantage of which I figured I could tinker with while we still have the option available to us.
before starting todays hour of coding, I needed and told myself to finish an article I stumbled upon regarding finding purpose in ones life. The article hadn't really offered much to me that I didn't already know, but the one gem that I did pick up after reading it was that the act of persistence is itself it's own merit and gives one life meaning. The article's quote from Lao Tzu’s “Tao" mentions “One who persists is a person of purpose.” With the act of participating in this 100daysofcode challenge, it certainly helps in keeping up my pace to get better and enthused to code.
Link to work: Unity cloud game project: //to be announced at a later time Article read: https://qz.com/1310792/the-secret-to-a-meaningful-life-is-simpler-than-you-think/
Today's Progress: Practicing puzzle programming exercises on CodeSignal and Codingame sites
Thoughts: While I have been reluctant in regards to relying on competitative coding sites like Codingame and Codesignal (formerly codefights?) I think they offer some value in getting some logic practice in with coding. An acquaintance I look up to for their programming skill was a bit dismissive on these sites which I could understand given how long they've coded for themselves but I figure just because something doesn't work for one person doesn't mean it won't work for me. So on occasion I'll try to do these exercises as a part of the 100days of coding regimen. The one exception I've heard folks getting picked up from is topcoder, which to be honest I'm not sure I'm ready to take on. I did also register with HackerRank a while back to practice exercises and I'll probably try to fit in that somewhere once in a while.
The big motivation that pulled me towards these sights was actually trying out a live competive coding session and doing very poorly. (by my standards) Nothing like being personally embarassment to light a fire to
The 100days of code challenge did stress the importance of selecting a project to continueously work on to get the maximum benefit and I suppose I should try to put in hours for those. But in my personal experience, just throwing your ideas against a wall to solve a difficult problem can burn me out and not satisfy the personal need of feeling accomplished. while these exercises might not lead to any publishable work, they do scratch an itch to at least feel as though I'm building up my programming experience.
While it has been a bit of a gap between my last post and this one (at least over a week), I did pursue some activity in coding on sites like those I've already mentioned. I just hadn't the will to make a post about it. I thought it would be better to not "cheat" the process by posting retroactively and just continue as I did before. (although it's a shame the coding streak was so short lived :( )
I think I'm going to wrap up the day by just reading up c# tutorials on some more advanced concepts and get a former project I've been neglecting ready to work on. While my enthusiasm for it isn't as strong as when the project was first concieved, these exercises have made the anxiety of not arriving at an immediate solution a bit better.
Link to work: Follow or add me on these competitive coding sites if you like: Hackerrank: https://www.hackerrank.com/JoffreM Topcoder: https://www.topcoder.com/members/sparkcloud/ Codingame: https://www.codingame.com/profile/bd2676ce5130fb1ab131ae2a7cdaebf05839142 CodeSignal: https://app.codesignal.com/profile/sparkcloud