4 Common Mistakes Python Beginners should Avoid – Towards Data Science
https://towardsdatascience.com/4-common-mistakes-python-beginners-should-avoid-89bcebd2c628 The article says beginner mistakes. That’s a bit harsh. I’ve been programming for nearly 20 years (admittedly only in Python properly for 5) and I got caught out by the default arguments being mutable. I was traversing a map, using a default argument and ended up traversing a map of 5 items about 16 …. Read More
Declarative Vs imperative code
https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/nobody-cares-whether-you-used-imperative-or-declarative-programming-66c396ecce06 I was talking to the year 13 class about declarative and imperative code. Academically it’s a clear distinction. In A-level it’s Python Vs Haskell. In conversation it’s SQL and RegEx Vs traditional coding. In reality it’s all just code. There are some nice functions that do Python in a declarative manner, but as long …. Read More
Sorting
https://youtu.be/WaNLJf8xzC4 This is a good graphical and easy to understand look at the sort algorithms. Unfortunately it doesn’t include merge sort which is on most exam specs. One nice thing about it is the real scenario, and also that it gives real world time calculations. It covers: Bubble sort Insertion sort Quick sort
Game making tutorials in Python
http://kidscancode.org/lessons/ The above page is essentially a link to loads of videos which are going through making specific games. One series is a space shooter, one is a platformer, one is a zombie shooter. It covers a lot of really advanced concepts but shows you every line that’s being written. Useful for anyone interested in …. Read More
Big Data vs Lots of data
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50578234 In year 13 we cover big data. This article highlights the difference between big data and lots of data. Lots of data is gathered from the census but that doesn’t count as big data as the data isn’t varied, there’s just a lot of it. Consider the difference between a census and the data …. Read More
Hard drive disassembly
Want to take a hard drive apart and put it back together again? Want to take the data from a broken hard drive and put it into a working hard drive? Don’t. This video shows how an independent repair shop does it properly. A great look at the inside of a working disc. You can …. Read More
Making a CPU
This is a fascinating series that creates a computer from a single chip. It gets very deep on the electronics very quickly. Proceed with care.
Break statements and why I’ll dock marks for them
Right, break statements and why they’re bad. Generally it’s indicating you’ve got a problem with the flow of your program and you may need to restructure. Imagine the following that hunts for a number, it’s an odd program, but it’s an illustration. # x = some number you’re hunting forx = 56for i in range(100): …. Read More
Abstraction
Okay, so this covers knot theory which is nothing to do with anything we cover. However, what is important is abstraction. Jade goes through the steps of removing all the unnecessary steps. I wouldn’t expect you to solve this problem, but I would expect you to take another problem and get rid of all the …. Read More
Lists and dictionaries
If you’re in Year 11 or above you’ll know what lists are…or you should have done Computing. Your loss. Or you did do Computing and weren’t listening. Your loss. So a list you can create like so: myList = [4, 8, 12] Nice and easy. You can then access the first item of the list …. Read More