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As a biologist I learned to program at 34, it was using Python (pandas and seaborn) in Jupiter notebooks. I mainly did data science in the beginning. I can tell
by teekert 5y ago
As a biologist I learned to program at 34, it was using Python (pandas and seaborn) in Jupiter notebooks. I mainly did data science in the beginning. I can tell you this worked extremely well for me. I could make small steps, add text and output variables and graphs constantly as I “developed”. It took me quite some time to shift to a full vscode flow, I kept going back to notebooks. I’ve become more of a software developer now but for data science (that which I learned in Excel and Origin) I still go back to the notebooks.
- wirthjason 5y agoThere’s many different styles of programming. Excel and Jupyter notebooks are a kind of “end user computing”. Programs developed in those environments often need a lot of refactoring to get turned into “software” (by some arbitrary definition). However these programs are incredibly useful for the business ideas they explore. To put it another way, using Notebooks with pandas is a great way to wrote biology programs. Using Notebooks to write pandas is a terrible way to write software.
- teekert 5y agoYeah I found this out indeed, by transitioning from data science to software development, there was an interesting time in between where I couldn’t let go of the notebook concept but I now certainly have. That said, the notebooks got me started in programming and did so in a way that I experienced as very gentle and with a flattened learning curve. I guess that was my point.