I really like coding with R and the tidyverse. It’s a great tool and it works well for the things I do. But I’m so torn, it’s not a real programming language I tell myself. It’s a domain specific language, something used a lot in academia and research but not something you would use to write the next Microsoft Word or use with 50 million data rows at once. And I don’t really have a use for either of those things.

I’m really trying to master the ins and outs of C and C++ but much like machine learning it’s not something I have much real world use for in every day life. Yet, I see it as a powerful and fast tool and I’m forcing myself to write code and learn the ins and outs of the libraries, the linker, build environments and vs code. Even if it’s easier to do something in R, I’m forcing myself to do it in C or C++. Honestly, I was going to do everything in C but C++ is so much more powerful – working with C libraries like glib feels like one big hack to overcome the limitations of C.

I often forget how difficult Python and R were when I started out. I got good at Python then R by using it every day. R is such a weird language for some one schooled in C++ years ago in college. But the truth is that the more languages you learn the easier new ones become. Syntax changes but core concepts remain the same though new ones are added all the time. Hell after all these years I still remember Hypercard and Perl though I’m a bit rusty.

I doubt I’ll ever be a real developer or a computer programmer. But I like maps and as such working with data. And I’ll do my best damn work possible as the Director of Data Services, writing the tools I need to deliver the results my clients need to understand their constituencies and effectively communicate. Who knows where this all leads but I know there is a lot of power in data.