Since the 189 Days post, I’ve been working on getting myself back into a daily programming routine. Sat down, picked the timeslots during the day that work best for sneaking in an hour of personal enrichment, and just went for it. The week went slow, but I did manage to get some quality time in. What did I do this week? What improvements can I incorporate to make it better? Well, read on.

This week, I re-started the Learn How To Code: Google’s Go (golang) Programming Language course on Udemy. I’d previously covered several sections of the course, though I thought that it would be better to simply reset my progress and start over- it’d been awhile since the last time I watch any of the course content. Most of the material at the beginning of the course covers the installation of Golang and/or the IDE/text editor you plan to use throughout your studies. These days I’m using VSCode for just about everything, including learning Golang. However, I did get a copy of the GoLand IDE installed- I’ll give it a try to see if it’s really over and above what I’m already using.

Although I’m beginning my study of golang again, I’m very focused on determining how to convert this learning experience into knowledge that is more practical and applicable in the real world. I don’t want to come out on the other side of my studies as just a student of the programming language. I really do want to know how to build things with it, like a microservice or a website. I’ll poke around this week to see what I can find. In the meantime, I’ll continue on with watching the lessons and trying out the sample code.