Learning a new programming language is much like learning to speak a new natural language.
However, as I’m sure many of my bilingual and polyglot friends would agree, it can sometimes get confusing to switch between two or more languages.
For example, my native language is English, but I was enrolled in French Immersion in school. While this certainly paid off and made me perfectly fluent in both languages, it did have some unintended consequences when I was working in English. For the longest time, I would add E’s onto many words or I would place the dollar sign at…
Once upon a time, there were only two ways to get a job as a software developer: Get a Computer Science degree at a university or teach yourself to code using how-to books. Both methods involved several years of study, and neither guaranteed a job at the end of the day.
Today, companies require developers faster than they can graduate, and people wanting a career change have made a new form of programming education take hold: coding bootcamps.
Short, sweet, and to the point, bootcamps fill the niche for aspiring developers who want a well-rounded education without having to spend…
When I first started studying data science, I would read every article I could get my hands on about people who had done what I was trying to do: become a self-taught data scientist.
These articles were full of details about people without computer science degrees who, against all odds, taught themselves to be data scientists in an absurd number of months. Naturally, these people were also then hired practically on the spot by FAANG companies.
Articles with sensationalist headlines such as “How I Became a Data Scientist in 6 Months” or “How I Became a Google Data Scientist After…
A lot of time, money, sweat, and tears go into getting a degree.
However, it’s no longer enough to just complete a computer science degree.
Every one of the hundreds of candidates you are up against for a single position will have gotten the same degree and will have roughly the same skills as you have.
To get a job upon graduation, you need to make the most of the four years preceding your job search. You need to use that time while in university to make sure you stand out upon graduation.
Here’s how:
If you have the time…
Woodworking is a curious paradox that both contributes to and counteracts climate change.
On one hand, woodworking provides demand for deforestation and the usage of toxic chemicals. On the other hand, woodworking promotes the creation of projects that are far superior to those from the “fast-furniture” industry and thus results in a smaller overall carbon footprint for the lifetime of a piece of furniture or art.
Luckily, it’s easy to make woodworking a very sustainable activity. Let’s take a look at five simple tips you should keep in mind to keep your next woodworking project eco-friendly.
Once upon a time…
Often touted as the new Python or R, the Julia programming language is taking the data science community by storm.
However, to only view Julia as a programming language for data scientists would be a huge missed opportunity for software, web, and app developers who are looking for an easy-to-learn language that offers more benefits than just number crunching.
Let’s take a look at six reasons why Julia should be added to the toolboxes of non-data scientists in 2021.
Julia initially gained its popularity in the data science community as an alternative to Python and R. While Julia is a…
Studying software engineering and doing software engineering are two very different things.
In school, the code is clean, the debugging is fairly straightforward, the technologies remain consistent, you’re gently introduced to new languages before being thrown into the deep end, and you rarely need to work with someone else’s code.
When it comes to the workplace, though, your job will involve debugging code that existed long before you even considered working in tech, running on the never-ending hamster wheel of new technologies to ensure that you remain “relevant,” learning more languages than the average non-tech person will in their lifetime…
It always used to amaze me how programmers could pick up new languages without even batting an eye.
Similar to how watching a polyglot flip from Russian to German to Portuguese and everything in between strikes intense amazement, watching a programmer move from one language to another without breaking a sweat offers equal wonderment.
Those programmers always seemed to me to be in another class. I always thought those programmers were just naturally gifted and were those individuals who as students, flew through math and science classes without studying. I always thought I was out of their league.
That is…
While we don’t know how COVID-19 appeared exactly, scientists are now suspecting that climate change may have played a part. This is not surprising, however, given that climate change has always been a driving factor in the spread of infectious diseases.
In January 2021, scientists from the University of Cambridge, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and the University of Hawai’i at Manoa published a study in Science of the Total Environment. They found evidence of climate change affecting the global distribution of bats and is, therefore, an important factor in the outbreak of SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2.
Every couple of weeks or so, I see a new article published about why data scientists should start a blog.
At this point, the internet is full of these articles all regurgitating the same well-known reasons why data scientists should have started writing yesterday.
“Data scientists should start a blog so they can practice communicating, so they can improve their understanding of data science concepts, so they can add to their professional portfolio….”
You know exactly what I’m talking about.
Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with these articles. However, it’s time that some new perspectives are shared…
CAN | Geoscience BSc undergrad student | Software Dev graduate | Ramblings about data science, the environment, and STEM