End of the Line

To be honest, I thought that last weeks blog post was the last blog post. But it turns out this blog post is the last blog post, rather than last weeks blog post which I thought was the last blog post. But now this is the last blog post. This weeks blog post, like the last few blog posts, will have nothing to do with programming python. This last week I have been preparing for presentations, rather than doing any research on new programming topics. Also I thought last weeks blog post was the last blog post...

You know how on some TV shows, writers will often try to make up filler material that consists of stuff that is done to death and horribly cliche. These are specials where the characters go to a foreign country like the UK (every long running US cartoon has done this at least once), or another state like Hawaii. There's also running the same plot over and over again with new things (think of Scooby Doo) to make it seem like each episode is new. Then there the one or two episodes that every show since the dawn of the television has done: the compilation. These are episodes that focus on the "highlights" and the "best of" what the show has to offer, and are what I can imagine to be a TV writers last ditch defense against having a script, or not having a script. So since I have no idea what to post, lets do a sort of version of that, but in a analytical way.

Statistics

*please note, for the sake of privacy of readers these numbers have been approximated. Figures come from Bloggers built in statistics. 

Over all, nearly 160 people have seen this blog. Nearly 81% of them used Chrome, 7% used Safari, 6% used Firefox, 2% used SamsungBrowser, 1% used Internet Explorer, and less than 1% used something called Phantom JS. The interesting thing about this is that people still use Internet Explorer, which was effectively killed off by Microsoft in favor of the Edge browser. My guess is that these readers were using OS's like Windows XP or Windows 7, which come with Internet Explorer by default. They could also be just sticking to the man.

In speaking of OS's, Windows was used by the majority of users, at nearly 50%. Meanwhile MacOS and Linux followed at more than 15%, Unix at 13%, and common smartphone OS's comprising the rest.

The majority of this blogs readers are from the United States, while there were a couple from other countries like Germany, the UK, and even Croatia. It's pretty awesome to see that your stuff is getting read by people from another part of the globe.

The most popular post was Print("Hello World"), which compared Python to Ti-BASIC and Applesoft BASIC. That post was my first serious post, and is probably the one I'm most proud of. I was surprised by the amount of views it generated, so much so that I actually edited it and completely redid everything, since it seemed to act as the introduction to the blog. A lot of the views came from Richmond's Information Science Daily, which is run by information science practitioner Richmond Davies. I have to thank him for introducing nearly a third of the blogs readers to my work.

Behind the Scenes

For 20-time python, I used the book Python Programming for the absolute beginner by Michael Dawson and the site codecademy for research. Python Programming for the absolute beginner is good and all, but is very slow compared to codecademy, which goes at a much faster pace, at least in part due to its interactivity. I also used a version of Python 3.0 and the Idle interpreter for the actual programming. For experimentation, I used Rep>it, a free online Python interpreter, and to run the vector code I used trinket.io, a site that allows you to embed a Python interpreter on web pages.

For the Ti-BASIC, I originally learned from Ti-Basic Developer, a site dedicated to the Ti-BASIC programming language for Ti-83 and Ti-84 series of calculators. I learned Applesoft through the original Applesoft ][ BASIC Programming Reference Manual that came with the original Apple ][ plus (although I have a Apple //e). Interesting though, is that it seems to be the original Integer BASIC instead, which is slightly incompatible with the actual Applesoft Basic. For emulating the Apple //e, I used the Apple //jse online emulator by Will Scullen.

The End of The Line

To be honest, this was a fun project. Being able to write and use my own code is amazing, even though I was under intense deadlines for the past few months. The blogging about something I cared about is pretty cool, and seeing the statistics light up after every blog post was exciting. As I said in my last post, I want to continue studying python, even through college, and will continue to blog on about it, even though the projects done by next Thursday. Thank you guys for reading my haphazardly written 20-time blog. It's been a wild ride.

Thank you.