Welcome!
Welcome to my Coding Blog! I am your Coding Buddy, and I plan to share all the things I learned about Coding (and Technology) over the past 10 years. I typically put out a few posts a week, so make sure to come back soon to see what’s new. If you are looking for something in particular, check out the various topics I cover in the Nav bar on top. I also have posts separated by difficulty level if you are interested. Don’t forget to share these posts if you find them helpful!
Posts
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Selecting a Model
In order to give yourself a basic working example, I highly reccomend you read through this paper. This is a pretty foundational paper for creating models of decision making and gives a pretty good walkthrough on the process. For example, it describes how/why you typically...
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Computation Modeling
A Computational Model is just a mathematical equation, serving as a hypothesis, for some psychological phenomenon. We use models all the time. Most commonly, the linear model used for regression. A computational model just adds flexibility because it is not predefined, so you can adjust it to your specific situation....
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What is the PATH and Environment Variables
Environment Variables are a special type of variable that are always accessible. They are available in every script on your computer and can even be used from the command line. One example is the
HOME, which is your home folder: -
Automating Tasks with Bash Scripts
A script is just a series of commands put into a file so that you can run all of those commands at once. Scripts also allow you to read in arguments and even read in user inputs in the middle of the script.
To start off you need to create...
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Take your bash Skills to the Next Level
This series is designed to help you build a foundation as a
bashprogrammer. We will cover topics that you would expect to see in all programming languages (e.g., scripts, functions, if statements, loops, etc.) as well as some that are specific tobash(e.g.,Why do I Need Git/GitHub? Why not DropBox?
At this point, you might be wondering, “ok, if GitHub just adds cloud storage to
git’s version control abilities why can’t I just use DropBox or Google Drive. What does thegit/GitHub combo add that I couldn’t just get from these resources?”This is kinda like...
So whats the deal with GitHub/Gitlab
GitHub and GitLab (an open source alternative) are primarly used (for scientific programming) as remote (i.e., cloud-based) repositories/server/storage location. Both GitHub and GitLab have several nice, helpful features to make developers communicate and interact with one another more and encourage collaboration etc. However, as I meantioned, most of the time...
Taking Git for a Test Drive
Now its time to see what all the fuss is about and try out
git. In this tutorial, you will learn the basics ofgitand how to save commits (checkpoints) for you code along the way. Before we get started make sure you haveI Don't... GIT it
Git often seems super scary at first, so let me just start by saying that 90% of the time you will only need to use these three commands.
git add . git commit -m "Relevant Message Describing Changes" git pushCustomizing Your Terminal
Change your Default Terminal Colors NOW!
The happier you are when you look at your terminal the happier you will be when coding. More Happy means more coding. More Coding means more practice. More practice means Great Coder!
This same principle applies for all text editors/IDEs (integrated developer...
Final Thoughts: Discover New Commands and Inspiration for More
After you have gone through the rest of the series, its time to remove the training wheels. To learn to code, you need
- to try to implement the skills that you have learned and
- the space to come up with creative solutions to YOUR problems.
So my goal,...
Creating, Moving, Editing, and Deleting Files from the Terminal
I left off the last post by hinting at some really neat commands that were centered around creating files and directories. To quickly recap, the
mkdircommand MaKes a DIRectory, you can even add the-p(for parent) option to make multiple nested directories. TheNavigating your Files with Bash
When you first learn bash there are three must learn commands. These are really important commands because they allow you to navigate around your file system:
pwd: Print Working Directorycd: Change Directoryls: LiSt (Contents)
An analogy that I like to...
What is Bash and How do I Open the Terminal?
Bashstands for Bourne Again SHell, and it has been the default shell for...Intro to Bash: Why are CLIs Useful
Like with most acronyms its often easiest to understand each word first. For CLIs the first word is Command-line. This refers to your terminal emulator (or just termial for short), more specifically the command you enter into your terminal (for more details click the words below).
Super Clean and Easy to Read Notes with Markdown
Markdown is a markup language. It is a super easy way to embedded structure when taking notes or documenting things. Markdown files are super common for taking notes, or perhaps most frequently, as
README.mdfiles for GitHub repos. This is because it has super simple syntax.For example...
Make Readable Functions with Python Type Hints
Type hints are a python tool that can be used improve readability by listing the expectations for code input and output for functions and classes. With type hints you specify the type each argument requires/expects as well as the expected output type.
Reproducible Python Code with Virutal Environments
Many of the keys to writing good code in python also mean you write reproducible code. Why? Because
Code is meant for HUMANS, not machines
So making sure you write good code means making sure you write code that you or others can read, understand, and edit without...
You Need to Learn Package Managers, Right Now!
Let’s say I asked you to install R and Rstudio on a new computer, what would you do. You would Google them one by one and then click on the link, then go to the downloads page, go to the section for your OS and then finally download it. Once...
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