Hello All -- I am an "old dog" 70+ years old. My career was in COBOL. Have you ever even heard of this "Dead" language? It is still very much alive. I put both of my kids through college by coding COBOL systems for over 40 years. Now, I am attempting to learn new tricks. I have embarked on learning Python, pandas, VS Code, git, github, etc. I am looking for any peers that I might have here to encourage and be encouraged. Are you out there?

Hello All -- Is anyone else using GitHub Co-Pilot Chat in VS Code? I noticed that in Chapter 1, Section "How to Get Help" of Alchemy Codex lesson that @Dave Ebbelaar suggests "1. Ask ChatGPT for help." Although this is a great resource (and free for ChatGPT 3.5), it is not directly integrated with your development environment. I would suggest considering using GitHub Co-Pilot Chat instead. Here, you can access AI assistance without leaving your development environment. What is your experience?

Here is a list of the nine most popular computer languages (note: Assembler is #10) according to the Tiobe Index. Which one is your primary computer language (now or in the future)?

First of all, thanks to @Dave Ebbelaar for letting us know how to execute portions of Python programs via Shift-Enter to run a portion of a Python program in a Jupyter Notebooks way. (see Alchemy Codex course, section Code Editor Configuration). This is truly a very handy way to run Python programs in an experimental or incremental way. However, there is another approach to accomplishing this functionality. You can split your program into Jupyter like code cells by separating them with a marker of: # %% Description By starting a line with "# %%" you can effectively turn a Python program in VS Code into a Jupyter notebook. [Note: you do have to have Jupyter installed via Anacoda or pip to make this happen.] Please see the official documentation on the Visual Studio Code website with this link: https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/python/jupyter-support-py Please post any questions and I will attempt to help you get this to work.

TIOBE, a company that specializes in assessing and tracking the quality of software, publishes the TIOBE index. This index shows the top 50 programming languages and their popularity. Here is the current chart of the top 10 languages. The complete TIOBE Index can be found at www.tiobe.com. How the index is defined can be found at https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/programminglanguages_definition/. Here are some facets that I find interesting: · Python – currently #1 with a 13.68 Rating. Although Python has lead the list for at least the last two years, it has lost some of its lead, down almost 2.80% this year · C# – currently #3 with a 7.30% rating. C# is looking like the language of the year with a 2.38% gain this year · COBOL (my “first” language) – although COBOL has been “dead” for many decades, it is still holding on. Currently 23rd it has a 0.68% Rating. · Fortran (another “dead” language) – Fortran has surged this year from 26th to 12th, up 0.64 % points. It currently has a 1.07% Rating. I hope you enjoy perusing these statistics as much as I do. Please visit TIOBE’s website to see where your favorite language ranks.