The demand for workers proficient in programming is ever increasing. Of LinkedIn’s Top 15 Emerging Jobs for 2020, only one doesn’t require coding capability. If you’re a computer science of information systems major, the information below may not be for you as this article is geared at people without a formal programming education.
What technologies should I learn to use?
The answer to this is highly dependent on your desired career field or the reason you’re looking to become more technologically adept. In statistics and business, two statistical languages have risen from the rest: SAS & R. At their core, think of these languages are super powerful calculators. Both can handle anything from simple summary statistics to working with big data and machine learning models. These are also fairly easy to learn for beginners and have thousands, if not millions, of pages of resources free online.
Another platform gaining traction is Tableau, which is becoming the gold standard for data visualization. If you’re someone who needs to tell a story with data through visualization, Tableau should be your best friend. It’s also a point-and-click platform as opposed to writing lines of code, a feature that may make it more appealing to some. You can see some amazing visualizations and start creating your own here, for free: https://public.tableau.com/en-us/s/
Finally, if you’re looking to learn a high-level programming language, Python could be perfect. This object oriented language can really do it all and is being used by more and more companies and people every year. Advanced analytics, website construction, dataframe work, software development, and much more can all be done using Python.
The best way you can determine which programming language to learn is by asking people who do the work you desire to. Find a professor, friend, or mentor with industry ties who can tell you what skills are in demand.
How can I learn?
If you’re a college student with space in your class schedule, enroll in programming courses! A college classroom and one-on-one time with a professor is highly valuable when learning to code. If you don’t have that luxury, start with free resources online, particularly utilizing YouTube and free books.
Once you’ve gotten your feet wet, move on resources like Coursera, DataCamp, Udemy, and EdX. These affordable resources have thousands of courses, some of which are designed by respected industry and academic experts.
A great way to stay committed and interested is to work on independent projects with data you’re interested in. If you like basketball, the data from Basketball Reference provides endless opportunities for analysis. Pew Research Center also collects data across a wide variety of topics.
How can I demonstrate my newfound programming knowledge?
First, make a GitHub account (here: https://github.com) and start using it. GitHub is a free website where people share programming projects and exchange ideas. For some companies and roles a strong GitHub can stand out more than a strong resume. Another way to flex your knowledge is to write and post articles to your LinkedIn account. If you get the chance to take programming courses, adapt your projects as writing samples and share those.
For both of these platforms it’s best to use Markdown files. These are files that output a pdf or html that includes your code and output, but also writing. With fairly minimal effort, you can create a well designed, neat report that shows your writing ability and creativity, but also includes all the code to show what you can do.
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