Learning Swift programming isn’t easy, but I must admit the language has stuck with me far more than any other attempts I’ve made to learn programming languages in the past. I credit much of that to the 100 Days Of Swift schedule that I mentioned last time – a brilliantly structured path that gives you code snippets to learn, example apps, and challenges to keep practicing. With that in mind, here are five things I’ve uncovered so far in my journey.

My Swift journey so far has been stop/start in nature, but recently it has become one of those hobbies that occupies a significant portion of my mind, one that I think about a solid 90% of the day. That’s good, really, because it’s a useful skill, coding, and one I am still very much at the early stages of grappling with. I’m never quite sure how much detail to go into here, really, because is it interesting to read about someone else learning how to code?

Once upon a time, before blogging was popular and Twitter even existed, I used to learn PHP. I had my books, I had my LAMP setup, and I had an expert at code sitting not too far away. There are various mentions of it on this site, until at one point, I gave it up in disgust. I had ambitions beyond my ability, and more importantly, beyond my patience. When it comes to learning code, I understand and enjoy the logic but get bogged down in the detail.

I started trying to do some stuff on my site last night (mostly involving forms and validation and stuff like that), and I got stressed out and gave up. This website is the hardest thing I’ve ever worked on, and I’m really, really proud of the fact that I haven’t given up with it. It’s probably the longest project I’ve ever embarked on and I’m still interested in it and want it to be better.

I learnt so much PHP today, and I finished off reading the software testing book that I started, so my brain is full of wonderful facts and figures. Today, I got a hangman game to work (only broken because of a damned ampersand!). It’s not aesthetically very good, there are no spaces between the letters so it’s hard to play, but the point is - it works!

I did so much learning yesterday, my brain’s in a bit of a spin. PHP and Software Testing and I was doing stuff on my website which is always teaching me new things. Thankfully, it wore me out so I slept okay. I woke up a bit too early for my liking, but that’s just the way it is.