Extract. Transform. Read.
Let AI Train You In Data Engineering
If you’re struggling to learn data engineering concepts through courses, try booking time with an AI tutor.
The following short read is an excerpt from my weekly newsletter, Extract. Transform. Read. sent to 2,000+ aspiring data professionals. If you enjoy this snippet, you can sign up and receive your free project ideation guide.
Software engineers can package anything — including buzzwords. “Learn new, industry relevant skills” was compressed to “upskilling.”
And while I’m a proponent of continuous learning, especially when it helps you avoid stagnation, at the end of the day, upskilling is a lot of work. Without proper structure and no mandate from a school or employer, it’s difficult to remain engaged, no matter how interesting the content.
My Udemy cart with 5 unfinished courses can attest to that.
So when I wanted to brush up on the ever-relevant PySpark, I booked some time with professor LLM; LLMs like Google’s Gemini (my choice) make incredible teachers because, like a real tutor, they can engage in a dialogue and adjust to your learning style on the fly.
As a former tutor, I appreciate that it explains concepts as it provides results. This is the educational equivalent of “showing your work.”
To get the most out of your chat bot study sesh, I recommend:
- Providing experience level context and desired trajectory: “I have 2 years’ experience with SQL but I’d like to learn more about CTEs as they relate to query optimization”
- Prompting the LLM to explain concepts as they relate to a specific role: “Show me examples of how a data engineer might use this skill/tool to build a data pipeline”
- Repeating subject matter for confirmation: “Let me make sure I have this right, certain Python versions are no longer compatible with Pandas?”
- Code correction/optimization: “How might I make this code more concise?”
- Demonstrating errors: “What are the common errors associated with this method? How might I troubleshoot? How might I handle the errors?“
Lost in the AI hype is the power of being able to streamline simple tasks. I did this recently by using function calls to automate the conversion of Google Docs to markdown files I can render as blog posts.
Answering a string of questions as a “teacher” isn’t as revolutionary as creating “original” movies or podcasts.
But by optimizing your learning, you’re creating an abundance of something far more valuable: Time.
Thanks for ingesting,
-Zach Quinn
