Ready for Thursday

Short weeks can be a drag. With the end so close, it can be really difficult to stay focused. I would be a lot more focused if I had more work to do, but I have literally nothing I can do at work right now. It's frustrating, but I'm making the most of my time. I spent the majority of the day studying about Python and learning from an e-book. I have no idea who wrote this book, or even the name of it, but I really like the author. The part I read today seemed really focused on regular expressions, which didn't seem like it was specific to Python, but it was useful nonetheless. In fact, I ended up learning a lot about regular expressions in the process that I didn't know. I've dealt with regular expressions plenty of times, both at work and on my own, but whenever I need it, I just google exactly what I'm looking for and I can usually find the answer. I've never actually taken the time to understand regular expressions. I still don't understand them to a large extent, but I started to grasp it today, more than I ever have.

I've been doing a lot of research about programming languages in general and trying to find some justification for learning Python. In the process, I'm finding that this could be a very profitable decision. Python is ranked as the most popular language in many polls, and at least in the top 3 in most, and is the most in-demand language right now, with JavaScript right behind it, either in 2nd or 3rd. The average salary is the highest out of all the programming languages. There is no doubt that knowing both JavaScript and Python is a profitable decision, but what can be done with Python? JavaScript is clearly the language to use on the frontend, more so than any other language by a long shot. However, Python is often used on the backend with frameworks like Flask. Even more popular are its use cases in areas like machine learning and data science, both areas I have a lot of interest in. It seems like someone who is more mathematically inclined could do really well with Python. More specifically, I have an Economics degree, which is definitely math-based and is also very graphical. It depends on how well this jives with my brain, but my thoughts are that Python and it's ecosystem could match a lot more closely with what I'm good at.

While I've certainly gotten better at JavaScript, I sometimes feel like trying to write frontend code goes against the grain for me. I'm not very inclined for design, but I'm certainly refining my eye in this area. I really enjoy creating websites, but part of me wants to do something with data visualization. This can be performed with JavaScript, and there are quite a few data visualization libraries out there for JavaScript, but it seems like Python is built for this type of thing. Beyond that, analyzing data has always been something that interests me, and when I first started to code, my idea was to become a data analyst. Right now, I have a lot of unanswered questions. I just don't have the information I need yet to make an informed decision, nor will I until I get deeper into this Python world. I do know, however, that having Python and JavaScript on my resumé is a slam dunk. As I said, these are often the number 1 and number 2 most in-demand languages right now, and knowing both of them would be dangerous. Whether Python becomes the language I focus my work around is yet to be seen, but I would like to know it as well or better than JavaScript, at least for now. The most important thing is that it's grabbed my attention and it's keeping me coding and thinking about coding.

Until tomorrow!