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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2552 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for December 7, 2022

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

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Fellow ML engineers and Data Scientists;

Do you hate web dev like me? If yes, and you learned it anyways, how did you?

I realized that becoming a 'Python Developer' is very low-hanging fruit for me, and I might as well keep that door open. I already know Python at a very high level and know databases, containerization, version control, testing, etc. The only thing left is "mastering" Flask OR Django, which I think I could do with 4ish months of self-study.

But boy, is it dull. How do front end devs do it?

But boy, is it dull. How do front end devs do it?

Not exactly your target audience, but for me it's realizing that webdev allows me to deliver something to someone. Whether it's a blog post or a cool little service, even a simple flask site gives me a lot of options of putting it in front of anyone with a browser.

I am a Python developer that supports Data Scientists, primarily working with the cloud, but also on data ingestion applications, and also some back end work. Flask and Django are back end frameworks. Maybe check out FastAPI too. I’m not sure it takes that long to learn any of those frameworks.

Getting a CRUD app set up on them is relatively simple, the complexity only arises when fulfilling complex business needs. Backend tends to be just knowing the concepts of a REST API, some stuff around web security (authentication/authorization and how to implement), and implementing logic in Python to return the appropriate HTTP response to a request.

What is your motivation to keep the door open? I wouldn’t bother if it’s that uninteresting.

I personally find it rewarding when an application I worked on helps others; that could be automating a process that was very mundane/tedious for someone else, improving the speed/performance of a system to save time/money or increase reliability of our services.

I find actual front end uninteresting. I feel the bugs I encounter are arbitrary, that JavaScript frameworks can be needlessly complex, that it takes a lot of time to get a component to render perfectly in the browser. It tends to just frustrate me, which is why I enjoy back end more.

What is your motivation to keep the door open? I won’t bother if it’s that uninteresting.

I'm not long enough into my career that I feel the need to "lock in" to a specific field. Also, economically, web dev is just about 10x more prevalent than Data Science.

I'm not long enough into my career that I feel the need to "lock in" to a specific field. Also, economically, web dev is just about 10x more prevalent than Data Science.

How does the income distribution look like in Data Science?

In webdev, at least a few years ago, it was multi-modal with a huge deviation. You had webdevs making $30k/year and webdevs making $200k/year. That, and the lack of interesting challenges, were what eventually chased me out of that subgenre.

How does the income distribution look like in Data Science?

I don't live in the US, around the same as any generic developer.

My justification for wanting to know some web dev is not precisely to become a web dev but to be a Data Scientist who also knows some backend Python development, to open a few more doors with what I think should be not much work.

I am far from the next Ian Goodfellow or even the next Dhruv Madeka, so having more doors open won't hurt.

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