Programming is Finally Making Sense to Me
I once took an undergraduate programming course where Python was introduced to us. When I graduated, even if I can barely remember anything from that course, I included Python in my résumé to attract more employers. I remember being in a job interview when I was asked about the things I know in Python and all I could say was I learned how to assign values to variables, perform arithmetic, and create if else loops. As a follow-up question, I was then asked what projects I have done using Python and I was like
I knew then that I would not make it and long story short, I was not shortlisted for the position I was applying for. I am not saying that the things we learn in school are not important, they definitely are. But these alone are not enough to prepare us for the real world. Maybe this added to the cause of my acquired hate for programming before; I just did not know how I would use it in the future. Now, I have learned some important functions in Python such as reading a csv file, calculating the statistical data of a certain dataset, cleaning a dataset, etc., and I have listed them down in this Jupyter Notebook I created using google colab. It makes more sense now because aside from learning specific functions, I can now use them to play with datasets.
Aside from that, I also learned how to clone a Github repository and make changes to it using the command line, which will surely come in handy in the future. It is actually not as difficult as I imagined. Let me show you how I added the Jupyter notebook I created to my very first Github repository which initially looked like this:
As you can see, there are only two files in it; the Hello and the README.md.
For a brief introduction to the command line, you can check out my previous blog here.
First step is cloning. Before anything else, make sure you have git downloaded on your computer. Once you are sure, just type git<space>clone<space>*link_of_the_repository_you_want_to_clone* then press enter. It should return something like this:
Now you have cloned the repository to your current directory. The next thing you want to do is adding the Jupyter notebook to your cloned repo.
First, download the Jupyter notebook as .ipynb through the file tab in google colab
Once you have downloaded it, move it inside the folder of your cloned repository. You should track where your repository is by looking at your current working directory in the command line.
Once you have placed the Jupyter notebook in your repo, you can check it out on your command line by switching your directory and typing dir.
As we can see, there are now three files inside — the .ipynb, the Hello, and the README.md.
Finally, pushing the changes or uploading the changes from your local repository (the one downloaded on your computer) to a remote repository (the one posted online). There are only 3 steps in this part.
First, git<space>add<space>.
This is to let Git know that you want to add changes in the repo. However, these changes are not recorded until you run git commit. git<space>status is optional if you want to see the changes that will be done.
Second, git<space>commit<space>-m<space>”*message*”
The minus m allows you to write a message to describe the changes you have made.
Lastly, git<space>push<space>-u<space>origin<space>master
This uploads the contents of the local repository to the remote repository. The minus u links the local branch to the remote branch (origin master) automatically.
And, you’re done! From two files inside the repository, it should now look like this:
