A couple of years ago in a rare moment of life clarity I decided I wanted to be a data scientist.
My very first programming class after an 8 year dry spell was Python. Python was the best. It was my first OOP language. It made sense, it looked right, and I could do cool things with it 🙂 But even back then I knew it wouldn’t be enough so I decided to go as far as I could down the computer science rabbit hole until I either gave up, got bored, or maybe find out this is what I was meant to do all along.
So over the next few years there was Visual Basic, Matlab, Web Design, Javascript (grrrrr), Intro to Comp Sci wi/Java, Stats, Data Structures in JAVA (whimpers), SQL and now C, my nemesis.
I have to take this class called “Other Programming Languages” as a prereq for grad school (yep, I’m going back again I must be crazy) and to learn about other programming paradigms. So in one semester we cover C/C++/Scheme/Lisp and Prolog. What the hell? I never heard of 1/2 these languages. I was so not looking forward to this class.
C has to be the most boring language on the face of the planet. Nothing about working in this language excites me, and my God the pointers. The pointers, the freakin pointers! Trying to decipher where everything is pointing to is making my brain bleed. I think it’s on life support. The synapses and neurons are barely firing. My poor brain barely recovered from last semester’s Data Structures class. It was touch and go there for a minute. If we don’t move on from C soon this could be the end folks.
But I’m a sucker for a challenge and I will hang in there for the long haul, while lovingly dreaming of Python. I will look forward to the end of the semester where the return for all of my C learning pain, will be the ablity to write a program for a toaster. Great. That is just great.
MaroonedintheValleyoftheSun 