So here it goes, the first post, starting with a little bit about myself, why I’ve set up this blog and what’s behind the blog name…
For the past couple of years I have become fascinated by both software development and more recently the data science field. Both of these professions are huge and learning resources abundant, and to date I wouldn’t describe myself as either. By trade the best description I would give myself is as a technical data analyst, although my current job title calls me “Senior Quantitative Analyst” – sounds impressive right? But hopefully one day I’ll become a Data Scientist who can create production ready data software and intelligence. My technical interest initially stemmed from my first job where I introduced to programming via Excel + VBA after very little programming exposure during University as I was far too busy playing online poker to do much else. At the same job I quickly added SQL and became proficient at data analysis and visualisation using a combination of those three tools. However, after moving company my technical skills did not progress much further for a number of years, in fact I actually regressed technically after forgetting much of what I had learned due to different role requirements. I soon realised I had become bored and started looking for fulfilment outside of work. I soon discovered that there is a much bigger world of code available for me to learn beyond Excel, VBA and SQL, and fortunately much of it is free to learn and provided various generous web communities.
Over the past couple of year I’ve explored web sources including Coursera, SoloLearn, Code Academy, FreeCodeCamp.com, DataCamp and Kaggle. I’ve also attended various meetups and gained various certificates saying i’d learnt X,Y, Z that had very little to do with my day job and generally taking up too much of my free time with not as much practical skills as I’d hoped. Use It Or Lose It could not be more true! Concerned with how long all this was taking, I even considered quitting my day job to attend a code bootcamp. Fortunately before taking a large pay cut, which wasn’t entirely appealing as a recently married 32 year old, my work circumstances changed and I’m now in a role where I get to code for the majority of each working day, finally satisfying my technical curiosity and providing a platform for consistent progress.
So you may be wondering as I’m now in a role where I’m gaining the right experience daily, working with like minded people and finally getting to use some of those skills i’d been practicing in my own time, why do I now need to start a blog to track my progress? It’s all because in probably under a month’s time (maximum 5 weeks) I’m going to become a dad for the first time and I’m pretty sure this will be the most challenging period of my life. My wife Rachel is amazing and I can’t wait to start this journey with her, but being told that you’re about the become responsible for another human being has made me acutely aware that I suddenly need to provide for my new family. So does becoming a Dad mean the end of my technical development or will it spur me on the bigger and better things as I look support our family growth? Well really only time will tell, but hopefully posting my progress on here will give me some added incentive to keep working hard and keep on learning.
Relevant experience to date includes completing a fair few of the FreeCodeCamp challenges (581 points I think means 581 challenges?) over the past 2 years, so far gaining the Javascript algorithms certification. I’ve also completed the DataCamp Data Science track with Python certification. I’ve also taken part in the two kaggle intro challenges. I would describe myself as an intermediate Python developer after developing numerous tools for my company but also with some Javascript and React experience. But I lack general computer science knowledge and want to become much more ‘full stack’.
And finally here’s what I’m hoping to write about:
- The joys of becoming a new father to <insert name here> (*Daddy*)
- Any new concepts I’ve been learning that I think worthwhile recording to help my understanding and hopefully others. I’ll try and target learning a new concept or improving my understanding of an existing concept everyday. (*Day*)
- Difficulties in time management and what development resources I’m finding useful. (*Dev*)
Daddy Day Dev 