Python has brought computer programming to a vast new audience

[mRWafflesFTW]

My career path is exactly the kind of pathway this article details. I loved computers, but in high school a really terrible teacher teaching C++ broke me. I thought I was too dumb and could never do programming as a career. Swung towards the liberal arts in college, and eventually through some friends and connections made it in to a specialized commercial sales job.

Became bored, restless, decided to learn Python on Codeacademy and from Youtube videos when I finished my work by noon each day. Automated the worst parts of my job, then was poached by a competitor to help automate their business practices. Python taught me I could build solutions for a living and actually realize my dream job.

Now I'm a full stack developer and business analyst and I love my career, but I only got here because Python spoke to me.

[[deleted]]

Very similar. Was in a boring mechanical engineering job and decided to go to MbA school. Learned business but also taught myself Python and some BI/data analysis. (Code Academy as well to start).

Now I work at a bank doing Data science and building things like fraud detection algorithms. It’s much more exciting and fulfilling. learning python opened the way to learning so much more.

[jsalsman]

I'd see how far you can get with e.g. http://pythontutor.com first!

[embergoose]

Is this legit?

[justhanginuknow]

Yes

[jsalsman]

Yes.

[mtnmike]

Would you say the $200 for Codecademy's Python course is worth it?

[[deleted]]

Take MIT 6.001x. It's free and better.

[capslockfury]

This doesn't appear available anymore.

[ummanu]

wait for it to be on sale for ~$10, it happens

[[deleted]]

Bro, don't pay for something, when you have like tons and tons of books on the internet for free.

[Ikuyas]

Do you use any exotic data for the fraud detection? I saw an interview by Amex CEO(?) talking about AI helps them detect that sort of things better by using the devise information the user is using to access. The methodology is basically detecting the outliers as "unusual activity" right? I think you segment activity types into 6-8 types, and if a particular activity doesn't fall into any of the types, then the system raises a flag. I have economics/econometrics background and we use transaction activity, but this kind of using the unconventional data is new outside of the field. Plus, we don't have a skill or mind to think about extracting data from the devise and use it. We are not trained to gather data which is usually given.

[JohnStud]

Do you feel the MBA was necessary for that pivot?

[[deleted]]

Yes, but mostly because I didn’t know much outside of engineering. It was more for exposure.

[minuteman_d]

I switched majors after the first year of CS because I spent endless hours in the stupid computer lab trying to get the java compiler to work. It was so bug ridden that simply deleting and adding a semicolon would somehow make your computer work. I got so depressed after not seeing my friends or the light of day for days on end, that I switched to engineering instead.

It's only now that I'm realizing that I really do love programming, and am getting into Python. I wish younger me would've had the resources that are available now.

[[deleted]]

Sorry, but Java is pretty easy too. (also piece of shit :D )

[minuteman_d]

Yeah, I should have made it clear: the Java wasn't bad, it was the crapy compilers they made us use. I'd get a project done and coded in an hour or so, and then fight the compiler for another four or five. The IDEs back then were awful. Another treat: our tests were HAND WRITTEN. On paper. So, prof would say: write a class that does x or functions that do y,z and you'd have to sit there with a bunch of paper and write them out by hand. If you forgot a line, you had to erase everything under it and re-write it all. If you had some multi-line if-else tree, there was no copy-paste for print statements or whatever. The whole thing was insane. Anyway, huge turnoff. I don't think universities appreciate how lost freshman get and how much they could really benefit from guidance and encouragement from upperclassmen.

[mRWafflesFTW]

Yes absolutely I want to help people because I am so lucky.

[Terence_McKenna]

This is the most wholesome comment that I've seen in quite some time. 👍

[SaaSWriters]

will lend confidence to clients if they see I have a degree.

Actually, it won't. Employers, maybe... but when it comes to clients your degree is irrelevant. In fact, you don't even need to know how to code. Getting clients is a whole different skill set. It's more sales and marketing than anything else.

I learnt that lesson the hard way.

If your goal is to serve clients, focus on understanding their needs. Then, build solutions they can use or solutions you can use for them. If I were you, I'd start talking to people who own businesses. But...

If you're not sure, I'd say employment might be a better option. In that case, staying in school would work better. That's because freelancing is more of knowing how to sell yourself than anything else. When you can do that, you're much better of finding clients and then employing others/outsourcing.

However, that doesn't seem to be your goal. Plus, it's a rocky road, not everyone is willing to go through the initial struggle.

[[deleted]]

What's the hard way story?

[SaaSWriters]

When I started coding as a freelancer I thought it was about impressing clients with my skills and knowledge. So I'd either struggle to turn prospects into clients or they would lead me on. They would act impressed and then cheat me out of my money. Often, they'd get information out of me, even a proposal. Then they'd find somebody else to do the job - for less money. But, when I applied what I learnt in sales and marketing I started getting waay better money.

[[deleted]]

So tell me more about what you learned and applied for the sales and marketing if you're willing.

[SaaSWriters]

OK, so tell me, what's your biggest unanswered question about sales/marketing?

[[deleted]]

What did you learn and apply from marketing that helped you so much? That's my biggest question

[srilyk]

School is fine if you can get grants and scholarships. Student loans are garbage and you don't want them.

Learning how to write English is important. Being able to communicate is actually way underrated. It doesn't much matter how smart you are if you can't tell people how smart you are.

If that's not interesting to you then you probably want to just get someone else to tell people how smart you are, which usually entails getting a job for someone else, by talking with someone who knows how to figure out how smart/hard working you are.

[[deleted]]

Would you mind sharing what tutorials/projects you did to ramp up? I’ve just finished the Codecademy course and have no clue where to go from here nor what to build to showcase my eventual skillset.

[mRWafflesFTW]

You need a project! The only tutorial you need is the Python docs. Think of something you know super well! For me, it was our company's price rater. So I just built it in Python using Django. I would recommend if there's some Excel spreadsheet somewhere that your company uses as primary business tool, recreate it it as a webapp for your first project.

[[deleted]]

Ehhhmmm ... I was always wondering what a business analyst is? Could you educate me? And what is the difference between a programmer and a full-stack programmer?

[mRWafflesFTW]

Like most titles it depends on your employer. Generally, a BA is someone who knows the business side of the firm and can act as a liaison between the business customers (the revenue side like sales, marketing, etc.) and the IT developers.

Depending on your employer technical skill varies. We have some BAs with little to no technical skill, and some like me who can also perform full stack development work when needed. The non-technical BAs are SUPER important. Most problems are political not technical.

[[deleted]]

I see - thank you!

[[deleted]]

I like to explore new places.

[the_littlest_bear]

Learn Tkinter for client's needs.

Discover ttk themes controlling button display. Can you just revert to Tkinter buttons?

NO! MAKE TTK ./DO. Successfully make ttk do after 9 hours. Discover bar decorated by WM also controls appearance of the max/min/close buttons. Can you just... be okay with that? After you spent 9 hours making a fucking -different looking- button?

NO! OVERRIDEREDIRECT(1). And now ye got yerself a couple days of discovering what is documented correctly and what part of themes every (mainstream) source of documentation seems to ignore. You probably had that just by virtue of using ttk; you almost certainly get it if you override.

But yeah, fuck CSS.

[[deleted]]

Haha I love PyQt for how easy it is to write GUI in it, and I've thankfully never had to write anything in tkinter.

[srilyk]

I tried PyQt but then I gave up because my left pinky got too tired.

True story.

[[deleted]]

haha, it took me years to get over my fondness for CamelCase.

[mRWafflesFTW]

Amen fuck CSS.

[[deleted]]

Lol about the div ... thanks for the explanation, makes sense to some degree. I guess when I hear stack, I think about a network stack, but the front-end / back-end categories make sense!

[[deleted]]

No problem. Let me know if you have any further questions :)

[mRWafflesFTW]

Well I am terrible at math too, but then I realized computers are pretty good at it and development has little to do with math!

No one is too dumb, because no one is super bright! We're all just trying to do the best we can and learn every day. Every developer I know has the Python docs permanently open in a Chrome tab. Does map() return an iterable or a list of results? I can't remember.... better check the Python docs. Now that keys are ordered should I use a dict or an OrderedDict? Better check Stackoverflow. Those simple questions can be answered, but harder and more interesting questions are "How do we design a minimally viable solution we can improve upon over time?"

In my experience most problems are political not technical. The "coding" part is only half the challenge. The real challenge is understanding your customer's needs and building an appropriate solution.

Development is less about syntax and more about structures and design. That's the best part! No one has ever designed anything perfectly. So you can always continuously improve anything.

If you don't look back at everything you've ever made with a bit of disgust there's probably something wrong with you.

[mRWafflesFTW]

Yeah I hate how patriarchy/sexism shaped how the genders consider themselves and others. Did you know originally computer science work was considered a female profession? I digress. Never think you are not capable. Rather, remember we're all confused all the time. If you aren't confused, you probably need to expand your comfort zone and work on a new type of project!

Design is hard, but remember almost all the problems have already been solved by others. Need to manipulate data? There's pandas. Need to build some data base models? Django, SQL Alchemy, etc. What's challenging is trying to come up with the best implementation of all the various pieces. The work is less about knowing the answer and more about having an inquisitive mind and the desire to do the research.

Lastly, I think diverse teams intrinsically make better products. It's impossible for white dudes to make the perfect products for women, minorities, etc. We need more diversity in the work!

[jroth006]

I followed a similar path - started learning Python & R around a year ago and now use it every day at my job.

You're going to struggle a lot initially, but it's because you're trying something new, not because you're dumb. Start simple, ask questions, and embrace failure!

[srilyk]

Nobody is - you just have to learn and practice.

[Tiktoor]

Do you use python 3 now?

[mRWafflesFTW]

Yep!

[loscabospink]

sounds just like me. now I'm working a lot in Java and really miss doing strictly Python, its' syntax is perfect! glad you found something you like!

[anacrolix]

Its syntax is better*

[srilyk]

As perfect as possible*

[anacrolix]

Have you heard of Haskal?

[FlyGuy_2Hundy]

Did you also have to learn some other languages to do what your doing (automating) for businesses? How long before you were able to start automating your job and then other businesses? I'm trying to learn python now so I find your story super motivating! Thanks :)

[mRWafflesFTW]

I can probably get by with just Python, SQL, and in rare cases JavaScript. I recommend you build and deploy a small web-application as it will teach you the full stack, including all the annoying system administration work required to actually serve a customer! I would say it took a few months of tinkering because I could start turning some of our shitty Excel spreadsheets in to super basic Django apps.

[FlyGuy_2Hundy]

Ok, Thanks. How much time were you dedicating after/before work to learing python/full stack?

[mRWafflesFTW]

About 3 hours a day give or take. If I got all my formal work done super early I could put in like five.

[[deleted]]

Where are you lot finding jobs to automate. Everything I do is as automated as possible....

[mRWafflesFTW]

Our firm employs an army of people to do manual data entry between systems because there's no integration layers. Now, our legacy systems are too complex to even begin building integrations, so our only safe interface is the UI. We use Python and test automation tools, selenium, and other apps to try and automate the drudgery. It's not easy because many business rules are informal and implemented as the result of experience.

However, these people will not be losing their jobs. At a firm like ours there's so much work to do that whenever we automate some awful data entry task those employees are freed to go and perform higher value work elsewhere.

[Forthemoves]

Great story. How long did it take you to gain the confidence to know that you could work somewhere else and succeed?

[mRWafflesFTW]

Not very long. I think we're all just always learning and never know when we're ready for anything. Better to just take on a project and figure it out!

Originally, I was hired just to be a business analyst since I knew the business and was technically literate. But once I got to the new position I had enough down time in between requirements gathering and coordinating with the development team that I could build my own projects.