How to discretely learn code at work lol

Look for any work task that you might be able to do via coding. It will take time to be able to detect those kind of tasks but here’s some examples:

  • If your office uses google’s gsuite (like gmail, spreadsheet, docs, etc) you can actually do a lot of scripting in javascript. For example creating a custom resusable function in google spreadsheet that checks if the values of one sheet’s cells exists in another sheet or document.

  • You can learn python to automate menial everyday tasks like sending emails, logging data into spreadsheets, crawling websites for data/info, and writing template documents, etc. This is a very good book to get you started.

  • Hey if you can’t resist visiting coding websites at work and need a quick way to change the page, you could write a chrome extension in javascript that listens to a specific keyboard input and opens a new tab or visit a work related-website. Or write one that will actually help you be more productive on the web.

It’s kinda hard to give many suggestions not knowing what you do at your job, but if you use a computer at work chances are most of your computer related tasks can be coded if not automated. I’m lucky I have a part-time web dev job but everytime I get a work task the first thought I have is how can I use code to do this task?

Sometimes it’s actually faster to the task manually and coding it would take much longer, but trust me it worth it if you ever get that task again so you can have a program do it in seconds instead of minutes/hours. Also it’s a way to train yourself with real world developer experience.

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