First blog post as an apprentice here at 8th Light, so just going to give a quick overview of how I ended up at 8th Light along with quick summary of the first day.
Prior to 8th Light, I’ve mainly worked in data analysis roles were coding was something that was required in order to answer a research question, or maybe in order to build a prototype for data product. The programming work was very iterative and scripts tended to be throwaway code used to manipulate a specific dataset into a format that allowed you to answer the question at hand. However, if the analysis or prototype was actually useful, eventually someone would ask that it be turned into a real product. At this point, your throwaway code was throwaway code no more. This final step of going from analysis scripts to product always took much longer than anyone wanted. Part of the difficulty was the various stakeholders involved usually had very different concerns. Engineers were concerned with things like reliability, scalability and testability while the data scientists or statisticians were more concerned with the specifics of the analysis or methodology. Oftentimes, the two groups didn’t use the same tools, have the same workflow, or even the same requirements for what constituted a finished project. So, it was learning more about how to bridge this final step of turning an analysis or data prototype into a reliable piece of software led me to the apprenticeship program.
First day consisted of typical first day stuff. I filled out some paperwork, got various logins setup, met with my mentors James and Anda to talk about first steps. James told me that my first project would be using C#, which will be entirely new for me. I’ve only worked with Python and R on a regular basis so I’m excited to start working with a statically typed language.
I spent the rest of the afternoon getting my development environment setup. James had recommended using Rider. I use PyCharm for Python development, so Rider felt very familiar. I did run into an issue getting Rider setup. The current version for Mac required specific .Net Core version (as of writing), which took a while to figure out and several uninstalls / reinstalls of .Net Core. Eventually, I was able to get things working and my first impression was really positive. Having never worked in a statically typed language before, right away I was struck by how helpful the IDE was. Looking forward to learning more going forward.