 Hello world surfing scratcher here, teacher, server programmer and on this channel, I help curious learners just like you along on your learning journeys. It's been a few months since we last caught up and see I'm in a different space here as well. But in this video, I want to share with you what I've been up to and what we have to look forward to over the coming months. To give you a little bit of a taster of that, I want to talk about sort of job research that if you're wanting to build a career in programming that you might find a little bit helpful, cultivating some really strong study habits, what platforms and tools can you use? Probably the main event is the upcoming series, which will be from scratch to Python. And we aim to take you from a block based programming language scratch into a text based programming language of Python. So more details on that and stick around to the end. And I'll share with you some details and how you can join our exclusive surfing scratcher learning community on Discord. So there's a lot to get through. Let's get stuck into it in just a sec. OK, let's kick off with job research, because it's really important to start with the end in mind. Recently, I attended Pipe Online AU, which is just an online digital conference for the Python community. And in there, there are a few exhibitors, namely a few employers. And I got in there and I asked them, what are they looking for, for prospective programmers like entry level positions and all that type of thing. And the reason for that is that I've sort of rekindled an enjoyment of programming, especially in text based languages over the past few months and years. This channel has a lot to do with it as well. So I'm looking to sort of get back in the game because I've been coding for about seven years, so a little bit outdated. You see, my background, it's in design and I'm a self taught programmer. So my computer science knowledge, it's a little bit Swiss cheese life. So I'm wanting to level up my understanding with a few other concepts that I probably skipped over through the journey. Now, there's three big takeaways that I've got from this job research so far. Basically, you want to search job advertisements and you want to search for the ones that are in alignment with the language that you're after. So let's just take Python, for instance, maybe you jump on LinkedIn, maybe you jump on a job searching website that's familiar to your locality. You just plug in a search term of like Python. And then it's really important to check out those companies, what they're looking for. Sure, they're going to look for some experience, but then let's zero down and look at those entry level positions. Check out the language they're using, the frameworks associated for that language. So for Python, that might be like Django and see if there's any front end requirement as well. That might be some JavaScript and the JavaScript frameworks that they're after. And this is specifically for web development work and it's going to be a little bit different if you're interested in games. Your starting point there would be to suss out all the game developers that you're interested in and look at job descriptions for them. So the first component is the language. The second component is the language frameworks that they're using there at that workplace. And the third component is to have a demonstration of the projects within that language and the frameworks. So that's like having some commercial experience. And they can be that can be pseudo commercial experience like you can just go away and create some projects yourself. They just want to see a demonstration that you know what you're doing. OK, so we've got the end destination in mind. Now we need to figure out how we get there. And that's where study comes in. So this channel has a mix of some educators and some young people. And I know that you're already going through your learning journey at school. You've got some obligations there that you need to do. But if you're really passionate about digital technology and programming, then really you're going to be dedicating some of your outside time to that anyway. And it's really important to cultivate some time your day for good study habits. Now, me as an adult, I've really got to drive this myself. I don't go to a school and they feed information to me that I just get to latch on to. I've got to really design this and that's quite effortful. So there's a few platforms that I've been using to help me out with this. And the first is Exorcism and Exorcism. Exorcism is a wonderful website. You can jump onto it. And what it does is it serves you up a whole heap of problems in your target programming language. It's got heaps of different programming languages there for you. And the challenges are lined with really a lot of the work that you'd be doing in a commercial project anyway. So I've been following along with the Python track. And the great thing about Exorcism as well is that it links you to a mentor or you can request mentor advice. So that way you can get some feedback on your problem that you've been doing. Now, that worked out really ace for me because when I submitted my first Hello World Python track project, I was using concepts from other languages that I've done in the past. And it wasn't really a Pythonic way. And through my progression of this track, and I'm only about 25 percent of the way through is something like 120 challenges there. I'm starting to embody the Pythonic way of solving problems. The other great thing about Exorcism as well is that you're all working on the same problems so you can publish your solution to the community. And then you can go and check out all the other communities solutions there as well, because there's so many different ways to solve the same problem. And I love that because it just teaches you a different perspective like your way is not necessarily the best way in my guarantee. More often than not, it won't be. I know that's true for me. So then you're just getting your curiosity and you're trying to understand how someone else has solved it. And that process in of itself can reveal some nuggets of wisdom there for you. The other platform I've been using is called Brilliant.org. And I found out about this platform through the YouTube channel Veritasium. On there, they've got logic courses. They've got some maths related courses as well as some computer science ones and a whole range of sciences, too. I'm currently working my way through the logic course, which is really helpful for you and your programming skills. It basically is a prerequisite for all the other courses there. And hey, if you just like solving puzzles and reels, then it's pretty neat as well. OK, so let's cycle this back down to the job pathway. And I've already got a couple of degrees and I have no interest in going back and doing a computer science one. But in saying that, I know that computer science is definitely something that you can learn via the internet. There's just a wealth of information out there. And the trick is to distill it down. And that's where this wonderful website comes in handy. It's called Teach Yourself CS or Teach Yourself Computer Science. And it's got eight or nine core areas that really make up to build your understanding of computer science. Now, I'm a big fan of Frida's Law, the 80-20 principle. And on that website, they've got the two foundational components that they really think will give you a strong foundation to go ahead and study the other ones as well. So that's translated into me studying a Coursera course called Nanta Tetris, where the goal of this course is for you to build a computer basically from scratch. What are the core components that you need to build up a computer? Right down from the low level stuff to binary logic all the way up to what you see on the screen. I'm not building a physical computer here. It's like a digital representation of that, but the concepts are the same. So I might be dropping a few videos of capturing my understanding on that down the track as well. OK, so it's really important to have a learning routine. I get up pretty early so I can fit as much into the morning before I put it off to work. And what I like to do is have some learning, a learning routine of about 15 to 20 minutes where I'm just going over content that I've studied in previous days. And a fantastic tool I've used for this is called Anki. An Anki is essentially a flashcard system that has a spaced repetition built into it. Now, what are all those things or flashcards? You know, you write a question on one side, you flip it over and it's got the answer. It's all done digitally on Anki. And what's spaced repetition? Well, basically it is for you to have a pass or an exposure to that card at the point where you're most likely to forget it. So hopefully you're like intervening just before you're about to forget that piece of information. And so what I've been using Anki for is to capture the insights from the books I read, from the courses that I study and just put them into real small bits like one question, one really simple answer, just to make sure that this content is saturated in my head. Now, if you struggle to remember like command line commands and all that type of thing, great thing about Anki is that you can pre download cards that other people have already created and just go through and suss out that learning. It's really good for discrete information. So information that has like a definite answer. So, you know, your multiplication facts is a really easy example of that. But you can also pair it with some other memory devices, which we haven't gone into much in this channel. And it is in my Q of videos to create to check out some of these memory devices going forward because they're just so useful to help you learn. OK, so that's enough on the tools and platforms. Now, let's talk about the next few months and what we have in store for this channel. And that's creating the Scratch to Python project. OK, so this is the main event for the next three months. I've been busy recording a new series there where I want to take you from a block based programming language in Scratch to a text based programming language, the same Python. So there's a bit of a chasm or a gap between these areas. And I'm not going to lie to you. It's going to be really hard work if you've never worked in a text based programming language before. Essentially, what we're going to do is build a spelling game because it's really important to build something that other people use. And I got the idea for this in trying to create a solution for a problem someone else was having. There's a teacher at a school where I'm currently teaching who would like a spelling app for their year three and four students or grade three and four. So I thought, hey, maybe we can do two things at once here where the older kids can build a spelling app and that can take them from a scratch to Python. And the result of that would be to make a functional app that would be useful for these grade three and four students. So whenever you're trying to create something, it's always great to have a target audience or a target market or basically a suite of users who will actually use this thing. So we're going to create a spelling game that uses text to speech. We're going to use a text file to create a list of lines that contain a word and a sentence. And we're going to break up all those lines into words and sentences and get the computer to speak these words to us. Yeah, we're going to do that in scratch. And we're also going to do that in Python. I'm going to translate it from one to the other. Now, if you're new to programming and you're not super comfy in scratch, this course probably isn't for you just yet. You really need to have a strong understanding in variables, in lists, in my blocks. They're known as functions in Python as well. You also need familiarity with operator blocks and control blocks because those are the sort of five legs of our table. Yeah, five legs to this table that we're going to be standing upon to help us on with our Python journey. Now, learning a new language takes time. It's not something you can do in a few weeks or a few months necessarily. Sure, if you know one, then it becomes a little bit easier going forward. But if this is your first language, your first programming language, your text-based language that you're trying to learn, it's going to take some time. Guarantee there is going to be some frustrations ahead. But this is where you need to do the work as well. This is where you need to remain curious. You need to persevere with any challenges that come your way. And really, just be patient. You're playing the long game here. Now, the goal of this project is really to give you a taste of Python. This isn't a full comprehensive intro to Python course. It's to build upon your understanding of scratch and translate it across to Python. I want you to follow along directly with me because you'll probably run into heaps of errors along the way. Sure, I want you to go in and remix it. I want you to go in and mess it up, tinker with it and engage with it so that you can interact and learn from your mistakes. Another call out is that this course isn't about best practice. It really is about just translating what we do in scratch across to Python. Doing something in scratch can be a little bit cumbersome, like we do it the hard way, and then it can be really easy in Python. And I really hope you see that with this project. And this project is a bit of a marathon. It's going to take around three months for you to complete it. But that's perfect because you can just chip away at one thing each week. I'm really breaking it down like that. So I'm not going to overload you with stuff with all the other content that you've got going on in your life as well. And of course, educators, I've been doing this with my group of learners. So I'm creating worksheets as I go along. And you can go sus those out in the description of those videos. OK, that's enough about that series. Now let's talk about access to this exclusive Discord server. OK, so this came about after Cool Scratcher reached out to me and asked if Surfing Scratcher had a Discord server, which it does, but it's quite empty at the moment. So it needs some action. And I thought, well, this is a wonderful opportunity to create a positive learning community, a real safe space where everyone has the right to be respected and everyone has the right to learn. And it's just something that, yeah, I want to do. The principles of this community is I want to create a space where you can come to to get support for these videos, but also sideways from that. And it's about being curious and it's about promoting good learning habits. Maybe you've got some questions about life as well. And I want us to interact in there and create this real positive learning community. OK, so this is quite bare bones at the moment. And there's going to be a couple of ways that you can get inside. Because it's very bare bones, I'm going to open up to 10 people. There's going to be a link to a Google form down below. And there's a couple of things I'd like you to fill out, namely, why do you want to be a founding member of the Surfing Scratcher Discord community? Secondly, what makes you passionate about learning? Thirdly, I want to know examples of you being kind and compassionate towards others, because that's really going to underpin our interaction in that space as well. So if that sounds like you, then definitely check out the link down below in the description to that Google form. And I'm going to read through all those answers and select 10 of you to be founding members of the Discord community. So we'll hang out in there for a month or so. And then I'm going to start to open it up to other people in the community. And the way to access that will be on Patreon. Essentially, you can gain access to that Discord server through Patreon by supporting this channel. I think the lowest tier is around $2 US. So that will give you access to the lowest tier of the Discord server. And hey, if you're a founder of this, I want this to grow alongside of you. I want it to meet your needs. OK, I sort of just want to facilitate it. I'm by no means an expert in Discord. I'm a bit of a noob with it, so I want to learn off you. But what I want to do is create an incredible resource that you can turn to to help your learning and your growth as a human. OK, so if you want to be that founding member, go check the link in the description. OK, that's been a lot and let's wrap it up. The last thing I just want to say is a big thank you to everyone who's contributed to getting this channel back up and running. After the start to you, that was pretty unexpected. I've already made that thank you video. There's a link up there if you'd like to check that out. But I just want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to everyone who made a donation that really helped. To get this channel back up and running. But I've been so determined to get this new series out to just raise it in. So I'm excited to finally release it to you. And hopefully that builds in the consistency going forward as well. OK, let's wrap up this video. If you've got any questions, comments or confusions, make sure you post them down in the comments below. But until next time, I'm off to go find a way. Yeah, there's no surfboard here, but I'm going to go off and find one. I'll catch you in the upcoming series. See you there.