Want to write something on tech!
I am a software developer, currently working as a Technologist at Code for Africa’s Dar-es-salaam lab and I have decided to write. And here is why…
I have been in the software developing space for four (4) years to date. I have participated in development of several applications (web & mobile) and been exposed to different programming languages and tools. Not so long, I found deep interest in machine learning and advance data analytics and I am now keen to kick start a career as a data scientist.
I started this journey from mid last year. Customarily, I first did research on how to get there. I read plenty of articles, blogs and comments which had great information. Some wrote on skills and tools needed, some on how to learn, what to learn, where to learn, how to practice and get real life experience and so on.
“Getting a master degree” was what stood out for me initially, it was an obvious and seemed like a clean slate route. However, this step hasn’t been very easy personally. Not many institutions close to me where offering this degree and that meant searching for abroad universities. Except that fees are too high and scholarship opportunities are very competitive.
So I caved in to self learning and effective use of freely available learning platforms. I enrolled to and completed some basic online courses in the field from Udemy and Coursera such as Big Data and Hadoop for Beginners, Want to be a Data Scientist and others. And I am currently doing Machine Learning course offered by Stanford University at Coursera.
I am reading one of the most recommend book in the field named “Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know about Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking” By Foster Provost, Tom Fawcett. It is an insightful book and I personally recommend it to other data science enthusiasts. I had signed up on Kaggle.com, a platform for data science community but I found the platform very intimidating for a beginner like me. So sadly, I haven’t been doing much there.
It has already been a year, and I honestly have made very little progress in this journey. I make excuses that there is no enough time because of my full time job. Well, they won’t be any growth if I keep up with such, and it is time to stop with excuses :) A few days ago I read a medium article, encouraging developers to blog. The writer was able to kick start a career through blogging, you learn faster when you journal he mentions. This moved me and sprung my decision to be here, to blog on tech!
I will blog stories on this publication that are solely data science related, sharing what I learn in the field, and how I practice with data science real life projects. I am hoping this will boost my progress in becoming a data scientist.
Watch this space!
Cheers!
