How I got from zero to one…

``(Sorry the pun was too good to ignore)

I started two years ago. There was no roadmap. Forced home by circumstances beyond my control. I started to learn....

I must confess a certain uneasiness when I speak of the pandemic and the cost to my family. I didn't have (and still don't have) much in the way of money ... but we survive.

I started with Google and began looking for free ( or nearly free) study material. I stumbled on to the Google IT course offered by Coursera. It was fun, engaging and ultimately humbling.

You don't know what you don't know.... I didn't know anything apparently. My lack of knowledge was an inspiration. I bought one book the COMP TIA + study guide. I'm a contextual/visual learner. So reading something rarely works for me. I needed to tear apart a computer to fully understand what was happening.

Luckily, I'm a pack rat that hasn't thrown away a computer ...ever. So I started taking them apart. I begged, borrowed the parts I needed to revamp an old (like really, really old) HP desktop into a modern day Linux Machine.

The machine runs Pop_os and I love it.

For my birthday my daughter gifted me an "old" MacBook Pro that her husband had in the closet.

So I did a deep dive into MacOS and got the thing updated to Catalina. I cracked it open and got it up to 16gb.

So now I know all three platforms....

The number one question people ask when you talk about a job in the "Tech Industry" is>> "what do you want to do all day?"

I want to play with data.

I love data.

I have always loved data... I started with graph paper and a calculator and used to handicap horse racing when I was in the 7th grade. I had always loved baseball and its almost endless supply of data.
Horse racing was more immediate. (I lived across the street from the race track)
The local 7-11 had the Daily Racing Forms for .50 cents. I would analyze them all day during class and pick my winners. Newspapers in the library the next day would have my "report card" of winners and losers.

Sales clerk at the 7-11 asked me what I do with the Racing Forms since I was to young to place a bet, and my parents would have never allowed me inside the track.

I told him I'd be back after school. I gave him my calculations and my picks... After that he started giving me the Forms for free.... 😁

He gave me $10 bucks once and thanked me for the "tips".
I never saw this as gambling, and I didn't care he was
making money off my data...

All I saw was
1) Data (clean data, and LOTS of it)
2) Immediate results

So my journey into "Tech" has been a life long pursuit. I'm not interested in writing the next great program. I want to clean data, wrangle data, I want to provide you with the clean data you need.

If that makes me the plumber and/or the carpenter of the "Tech" world I'm happy with that.

So how did I end up with Julia?

It just works for me.

The REPL/Pkg/shell system (I don't know what else to call it) is both brilliant and simple.

I'm not saying anything about Python or R, those are fine tools, and RStudio is simply a work of genius.

"But I'm with Julia now."😂🤣

so I need to say thanks to a few people.... I will always say thanks to the resources I've discovered every time I post...

(https://twitter.com/OfficialLoganK)
The "voice" of the Julia Community (IMHO)

(https://twitter.com/saronyitbarek)
The Host of CodeNewbie Podcast
I recommend listening to the first year...an amazing time capsule. And she is probably one of the best interviewers I've ever heard.... and I've interviewed over a 1000 people in my career. 🤷🏼‍♂️

(https://www.youtube.com/c/juliafortalentedamateurs)
I don't know who is behind this YouTube Channel, but its amazing, well thought out and well executed. Long Live the Dabbling Doggo!!