Thanks for this comment. If you have the time, could I ask for your advice about this route? I'm a Windows sysadmin who's been working to transition into progra

Thanks for this comment. If you have the time, could I ask for your advice about this route? I'm a Windows sysadmin who's been working to transition into programming. I've made a few webapps, which I somewhat enjoy making, but lately I've become interested in data science. I have a stable position now where I have a lot of time to learn new things not directly related to my job. I've been trying to figure out if I should simply take advantage of that while not working in a related field or to look into a business analyst position. In fact I was just contacted a few days ago by a recruiter for just such a job! Would creating public demo projects alone be enough? Or should I get some experience -- even just as a spreadsheet jockey -- while potentially having much less time to devote to learning? To give you a better idea of my situation, I oftentimes have days where I can spend half of it learning whatever... and my boss is even fine with that (and has encouraged me to move on to better things, since I can't really go any further here). Any insight that you can offer would be very much appreciated.