What do you know about Python? Looks like we are on a bit of a roll with interviews over at TARTLE HQ. Recently, Alex and Jason had the chance to sit and talk with Michael Kennedy, founder of the Talk Python to Me podcast. If you are unfamiliar with it, Python is a programming language that is relatively easy to learn well enough for regular people to be able to do some cool things with it. Michael realized this years ago and started looking around for a podcast to tell the stories of people who learn to adapt Python to whatever field they are in to help answer some genuinely interesting questions. Unfortunately, back in 2015 no one was really doing that yet, so he had to start his own. Talk Python to Me is the result. Since then, Michael has been able to interview a wide variety of programmers and gotten some real insight into how to help people get more into the world of programming and data science.
One of the big effects of the rise of the Python programming language is the democratization of both coding and of data science. Because it is so easy to gain a working knowledge of, a vast number of people, from philosophers to economists have been able to use it to help in their given fields. Kennedy has noticed that many people who don’t consider themselves coders or software developers are making use of this language. It may be that Python’s greatest accomplishment that people who would normally never get into coding are making effective use of it.
Another insight that Michael talks about is that while educating people on the possibilities of both data science and coding it would be more to the point to say it comes down to inspiration. That is contrary to what the prevailing opinion was ten years ago. Back then, people were complaining that there weren’t nearly enough data scientists and we need to try to convince all kinds to be data scientists. However, that wasn’t working. They didn’t understand it and it just wasn’t interesting to them.
So, what does it mean to talk about inspiration instead of education? It means that instead of telling people how important things are, we need to actually show them. Demonstrate what data science can do and let people actually play around with it a bit instead of just cramming people’s heads full of information.
Also, don’t just shove data science down people’s throats. Instead, show them how it can benefit what they are already passionate about. If a high school student is passionate about volcanoes, show him how Python can help him better predict eruptions. If another is interested in tracing the evolution of language, show her how the programming language can be of use in showing how one language evolves into another. Doing that makes the concept of data science not just real, but interesting.
It isn’t just the sciences that benefit either. Guests on Michal’s podcast have included members of F1 and NASCAR racing teams. They’ve found that in switching to Python from Excel they’ve gained an edge on the race track.
Pointing out things like that makes it easier and more enticing to people to learn Python. Suddenly, they are able to really get into their own source data, maybe for the first time. That lets people save both time and money by avoiding third parties altogether. They no longer have to pay for some other service to analyze the data they’ve collected, or spend time sifting through reports on data someone else has collected. Now, a person can actually gather their own data and maintain control of it from beginning to end. Saving time and money while putting people in control of their own data? That’s something TARTLE can get behind.
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