One of my pet peeves with the public discourse on learning to code is the fixation on methodically reading books or taking courses. Most ppl I know who learned to code in K-12 did so for gaming or webdev, for a purpose. It's hypocritical to enforce "textbook pedagogy" imo
when the programmers we herald are the ones who have been coding from age 10 & learned to code so they could make games or websites -- ultimately as a means of engaging with their community! I TAed for years in college to learn: community & purpose are _so_ vital in education
I rarely go on gender rants in this app, but there are all these gateways to learn to code in K-12 (robotics, gaming, app dev) that are way more accessible to boys. As a non-boy, I never had the idea to screw around with STEM shit & follow my curiosity, I was told to
Get good grades, read my textbooks cover to cover, and always have my shit together. Like many other non-boys, I'm "well-rounded." So a reason why the PhD was a _huge_ adjustment for me was bc I'm now rewarded for following down rabbit holes, something I had zero experience doing
Anyways this rant is probably incoherent, but when I mentor people now, I take great care to encourage them to ride trains of thought to the end for fun. Idea generation is a muscle developed by exploring, or asking "what would happen if I changed x? y?" And actually doing it
Data science is an amazing field because beginners (1 month in) can conceivably ask a question no one else has asked before, AND be empowered to write & run the experiment themselves. Intermediates (<1 year) can read a paper, fork a codebase, make a change, and see what happens
Not to mention the unreal emotions evoked when you see: loss curves going down, beautiful plots, an actual insight you extracted from real data, etc. No textbook or online course is going to validate these emotions. Only community & purpose. Ok end of rant
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