Show HN: Udacity really did teach me to build a search engine

http://davedavefind.appspot.com/

by ecmendenhall • 14 years ago

6 2 14 years ago

davedavefind.appspot.com

I'm a novice Python programmer who just finished Udacity's CS101 course. I had a little Python knowledge going in, but no computer science background. (For instance, I knew how to use a dictionary, but had no idea that dictionaries work well because they use hash tables). Udacity promised to teach me to build a search engine in seven weeks, and sure enough, I did! I'm entering this very simple search engine in an end-of-class contest.

We never actually implemented the search engine code we wrote in class, but I did learn the basics of how a crawler, graph, and index work. More important, I learned a lot about how to solve big programming problems from the Udacity format of short videos plus immediate experimentation. I'm amazed that I got this project to work, but it was really just a matter of breaking big problems into small steps, reading documentation, and asking for help when I got stuck.

I'm excited for the next round of classes, impressed at how much I learned, and optimistic about new models for online education.

jjNford• 14 years ago

Awesome and congrats! Great job.

Show HN: Udacity really did teach me to build a search engine

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