.startswith()

Hackbright Class Spring 2013

8. Its around the age I was when my father brought home our first PC and I learned how to get around in DOS to play games.  Fun fact is also used to be the number of standard bits in a byte.

So here I am 30 years later enrolled in the Python programming boot camp, Hackbright Academy, learning how to be a developer (or hacker as I’ve been informed).

When I was 18, I was totally into hanging out in the BBs on Prodigy, and I was loving my Pascal programming and Calculus classes in high-school. I was so on the right track to pursue computer science yet I didn’t. There are a lot of reasons on why. Bottom line, over the last 20 years I let my own insecurities and misperceptions about what it takes to really be in the thick of technology, keep me on the fringe.

Don’t get me wrong, I had plenty of other interests I was pursuing and I still worked on technology related projects. Still I always harbored a desire to know more. My father’s recent death made me really take stock of life and revisit this interest as well as challenge my assumptions about myself.

So here I am making a go of it to learn code again. I know that it is definitely not a bad skill to have. With the way things are going in our world. Knowing a programming language is probably giving Spanish a run for its money in valuable skills to have.

This blog is to share parts of this experience for those considering programming or just thinking about taking a risk to do something very different.

Note: For those interested, here is a link to the function .startswith() .