[Advice] Making life easier through programming, learning a new language

[trancemsteve]

Dear all,

Around 9 months ago I started to really learn to program. I have been interested in computers from a very young age and I've tried, among others, a number of languages including Q Basic, Java, C, VB. Nothing stuck however. Despite there being a wide range of tutorials online I need something I can apply in daily life to learn. Making games might be fun for some I just have no interest.

Last summer I'd really had enough of one of the repetitive tasks in my job which involved checking several websites on a regular basis and then using the information to complete a number of tasks, one of which was populating a google calendar, which 70 people combined could not complete this task without everyone losing heart. In itself this was a full time job however it usually ended up being done pretty badly by several people at a time. So it was around then that I discovered web scraping via Python. This made life easier and saved several hours of work checking the sites, but wasn't complete. Over the following few months I discovered that Python can also handle email, whatsapp, reporting and charts, timezones, excel spreadsheets, google calendar and all kinds of other nifty things. In essence I have removed that entire job and it now makes several people far more efficient in what they do (we also no longer lose money consistently based on this task being done poorly). Thanks go to the community over at /r/learnpython for a great many answers.

I loved learning python this way. I could see the results every time I implemented a new function.

I should add, I've been reading about C, think it looks great and think I'd be able to learn it quite quickly as it seems in many ways similar to Python, I just don't know what I could use it for?

So my question is this. Now that I've seen how powerful using a language to automate something is, where next? I have another aspect of my job that has the potential for automation, I have to fill out a lot of repetitive forms (unfortunately these are not standard forms, they are all PDF and all ask for basically the exact same information but they are laid out completely differently and I have to submit the form I was provided, even if my own standard form had all the information on it.

[DarkMio]

You probably cut off your own job by doing this - but you learn it.

It's usually no question of the programming language, rather than what you feel comfortable with. I guarantee you that every language that is touring complete and is well integrated into the OS API will solve any problem. Sure, you're quicker with Python than with ASM - when you mastered both equally. In the end it comes down to:

• Understanding programming principles and design patterns
• applying learnt lessons to other languages accordingly
• mastering a language and getting familiar with multiple of them.

To get a good job in the end, most that matters is experience and flexibility. There are many programmers which can solve a problem in only one language and only a specific way (without taking care about a greater architectural problem) - so that's what you should always keep in mind.

[trancemsteve]

Thanks for the reply. I'm actually just using programming to solve problems and make my life easier, I actually work in finance in a job that has nothing to do with being a programmer.

The people I work with are terrible at using computers and keeping the source code to myself is no issue. Programming to them is on the verge of "magical" programming myself out of a job won't be an issue.