Having had no background in IT, I have learned a lot about programming in the past few months of lockdown and strongly considering a career change from aviation. I’ve chosen the Front End pathway and I’m on route to complete the Responsive Wed Design syllabus God willing. I am looking forward to be able to start with JavaSctipt so I can learn the basics of algorithms and data structure which I believe would help me understand the concept of programming regardless of the programming language. (Please correct me if I’m wrong). My concern is, I’m recently finding my self more inclined toward Data Science than toward web development and I’m afraid I’m getting distracted as a newbie with whatever is new to me. If I remained interested about data science, would you recommend me to continue on the same route until I master the front end then transition later on from front end to back end and data science related route or is it better to head straight toward the back end route from now on please?
I’d appreciate the input of someone who had a similar experience as well.
If your just starting with the front-end, and are curious about the data science part of stuff, I’d recommend continuing into learning JavaScript, and getting your hands on programming.
The Python part of the curriculum will teach you programming basics in Python as well, which the focus of teaching more about data science. However, its undeniable that JavaScript is the language of the web, so if you plan on doing anything web development related, I’d go learn JavaScript.
Its easy to start going after every “shiny new thing” that you find, but the main thing underlying most of these new things is knowing how to program. Your right in assuming that if you learn JavaScript you will be able to understand more broad concepts of programming. This is why if your good in 1 language, and understand the underlying fundamentals, you can easily move onto another language. As you only need to learn the syntax of the new language, rather than the syntax and all the underlying concepts.
I recommend to do the stuff that keeps you motivated. This doesn’t mean that you should feel motivated all the time (you will NOT), just motivated for the bigger picture.
I would try to think in projects instead of “mastering x”. Mastering means 5y+ of work and keeping up with changes.
I’d pick a challenging project and learn the tools on-demand. I recently was interested in some data science stuff. So I picked up pandas and did some stuff over a weekend. The fundamentals are always the same.
I think beginners fail, because:
they do stuff they are not interested in
they do not-challenging stuff and see no progress (tutorials all the time…)
This is a very valuable advice. Thank you! God willing, I’ll stick with the pathway i’m on until I truly know how to program. I think by then I will be able to make a better choice, no rush right ? I look forward to use what i’m learning to create simple projects that keeps me motivated. I’ve bookmarked this to look back at one day. God bless!
You’re right! I am currently brainstorming on how I can use whatever i’m learning to build small web pages as I go on. I am nonetheless excited to be able to work on the given projects at the end of the course here. I’ll make sure to challenge myself across the way. Lets say I wrote a simple markup & CSS and want to view how they look? Is there’s anyway I can do that? I would appreciate your insight.
My thoughts are that DS is in demand, but it also involves a lot of advanced concepts and a lot of competition for those jobs are against people with Masters and PhDs. I think that that would be a hard field to break into without a degree. But I may be wrong - I see a few web articles talking about doing it. I’m no expert, but my perception is that it’s easier to break into web dev without a degree.
But even if you don’t become a full fledged DS, learning some will make you a better developer in general. If it interests you, learn some. Who knows where you will end up? Just learn and explore. And who knows, maybe you will become one of those guys that lands a DS job without a degree. Or maybe it will just become another interesting side-trip on the journey to wherever you end up.
Although I remain interested in DS, I will try to focus on one task at a time. Web Dev can be my starting point into knowing how to program and afterwards I can satisfy my interests through better informed decisions I believe. “Just learn and explore” I love this, I will keep it on mind and see where the journey takes me. No worries, tomorrow will come on time
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this! I appreciate it.
