Never too late…

… a beginners journey to coding

2020 was a hell of a year. Covid-19, almost a year of lockdown, full blown deadly pandemic, job loss, kids out of school, and the death of my dad. With the dawn of the new year what else did I have to lose? Welcome 2021. I turned 38 at the beginning of the year bought an updated laptop, signed up for an online coding course and here I go. I’m on my way. Down a road traveled by many wondering if there’s anyone out there like me. Granted it has only been 3 days but I’m hopeful. Now mind you I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT CODING, not even a little bit. I had no clue where to start and to be honest I was just following the advice of my brother that was more so geared towards my 14- and 11-year-old boys, NOT me. So, I did one module of coding basics and I’m like well this is for kindergartners. I mention it to him and he’s like “try python”. So here I am . Day 3. Pulling hairs because I can’t print (“my own freaking name”), or anything for that matter. I was totally confused on one of the projects where I had to assign a value and make several strings and then in the end print a receipt. How do I know when to put parentheses and quotations and when not to? Then I also realized I’m not meant to print to everything, but I was really just trying to see if what I was inputting was actually correct. It was all too much at the moment and I had to take a break. Now I am down the rabbit hole of YouTube videos. Python this and JavaScript that and data structure and algorithms, Lions and Tigers and Bears! What did I get myself into. A suggestion from one video was to document my progress in a blog. I’ve never blogged. Surprising? I think not. I like writing so I think we’ll be good here. So, follow along on this journey and see what becomes of me. Print (“Hello world, I’m Zakiya”). I don’t even know if that’s the correct format. Here we go…