As part of my learning-new-things endeavor (I don’t think you should ever let yourself become stagnant), I’ve been doing a little bit more with Python. Specifically, I am working through this Codecademy course on using APIs in Python. The reason I have for wanting to learn this stuff, besides personal enrichment and keeping my brain busy and blah blah blah, is that Marvel has recently released their API to the public. I am a big ol’ comic book geek, and I think it would be cool to pull their data together in interesting ways. Do sales go up when Marvel teams up Cloak and Dagger with Spider-Man? How many times did Jack Kirby draw Uatu the Watcher? How many times do Marvel characters attend Empire State University? et cetera. See? Data can be fun, I swear.
Speaking of data, another thing that looks interesting is the Introduction to Data Science course by Dr. Bill Howe on Coursera. I’m a little hesitant to sign up because it notes that you need to have the equivalent of two courses on Python and SQL, and I haven’t had formal coursework on either of those topics. However, I have a month to get up to speed, so I’m going to give it a shot. What are you learning these days? Have you ever taken a Coursera course?