What are you missing out on by not coding? (Data Science Edition)
This is one of the most common questions that anyone with a non-CS or non-Tech background has. What exactly is the power that ‘coding’ holds that enables students to get employed so soon, get pay grades that are orbital, and a migraine that won’t leave (pun intended for anyone who does code around in their work, don’t worry.)
Like every question comes with alternative answers, I’ll try to answer this question from all that I know about coding and from different perspectives so you can choose an answer that you can relate to the most of the few given below:
- Employment and job security
- Relevance
- Deliverables on steroids
- More than a desk job
- Redefining the world
Employment and Job Security:
There’s no second opinion here that the most opportunities in the tech world and probably the highest number of openings are available for people who know how to code. Especially in the data sphere, because companies and enterprises are switching to data solutions that use big data and also as they dive deeper into existing datasets, automate processes, and monitor metrics on a real-time basis, it calls for people who know how to code well.
The value that a company can derive from someone who knows the business inside out and can deliver solutions using coding can amplify the performance and reduce the time taken for finding solutions to business problems in every industry.
Coding with data is all around us but we’re just too ignorant to notice it.
This is also why job security is at the peak in the data science sphere if you have the right skills, it is one thing to write the toughest algorithm and another thing to write a simple but ‘useful’ algorithm for a company and the latter has a lot more value.
Relevance
Relevance is definitely one of the most important reasons why you should learn coding.
Picture this, you won’t really use a phone that comes with a keypad today or drink water out of a borewell (google it, it’s an interesting machine), or watch the Television on a B/W Screen. Why?
When all of it is still serving the same purpose to you (for which it is basically designed), then why are you preferring a smartphone, a purifier, and a LED TV instead?
RELEVANCE.
If you’re not coding in your data projects yet, you’re missing out on the most amazing tool of the 21st Century (so far). The possibilities are endless with coding and the value you can derive from your data, is endless too. To harness the true value of your data, it’s high time you code.
Just like we don’t use any of the age-old tools in our day-to-day today, your skills will become obsolete over time too and therefore needs to be relevant to the time you’re in.
Deliverables on steroids
The heading will make sense. Wait for it.
Think of it this way. It takes 10 mins to calculate correlation on paper if you’re a student. It takes 5 mins for the same thing if you use a calculator and know the formulas. It takes excel, 2 mins to calculate the same thing if you know the right formula. It takes python or R Programming, 0.1 seconds to do it.
Yep. 0.1 Seconds.
Just compare it with your usual pen/paper approach.
If you have the right computing power in your system and a relatively small dataset (10 variables and 10000 numbers), it will still take 0.1 Seconds in Python.
The best part is, coding is as small as writing “df.corr()” and you’ll get the correlations for all your variables in an instant, giving you almost 90% of your time to analyze the numbers and answer business problems. This is just one example and you can do pretty much everything using coding today.
Time. Effort. The energy that you use. Complexity. It is all reduced once you switch to coding and just like that… your deliverables are juiced.
More than a desk job
Coding is a desk job no doubt. But in the data world, according to me, and anyone else you ask who does love data science, it’s more than a desk job. It’s an investigation that takes you through the entire data cycle while iterating a data story that tells you a simple plot, a couple of characters, a story that weaves how they connect and what happens, with a moral that may or may not be useful to the reader.
The idea is to approach the data problem from as many angles as possible to identify all kinds of things that can go right or wrong in a particular situation so that factually, the business is backed with enough data to make any decision without any delay, thereby not losing out on any opportunity at hand.
The aforementioned in today’s world is impossible without coding.
It’s a lot of things to get to a point when you can do an analysis so deeply and also automate the entire idea so that you only have to watch it work the magic next time. More than anything, it’s experienced and takes time (for obvious reasons). But, every new day is a new way you can approach a problem. More than a desk job for real.
Conclusion
Overall, if you like coding and pursue it and grow your skills… over time, you’ll see that opportunities will present themselves to you. The idea behind coding is also that you don’t have to really spend a lot of your time learning things that you don’t understand but knowing all that you already understand and making it more efficient will also get you going.
Learning how to code has to be as fundamental to a job-seeker today in the data field as learning the alphabet to a toddler, simply because the entire world is going to move ahead to using massive datasets that will make Excel incapable and will also take automation and AI to make sure that the value derived out of data is maximized.
Let me know in the comments below if you have any amazing reasons I missed out on. Leave a clap and follow to stay in touch with any new articles and to support the blog!
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