When my Job Inspires me to Study and more

Over that last year, during the furlough season, I lost my way in studying Python. The Deep Dive Python course I was working through went to the side and I drifted in and out of studying, more dabbling with other languages whilst looking for work, and trying to make sure I had a roof over my head.

The last few months working for the Rail Delivery Group, UK on a project for smartcard public transport has given me the major boost I needed. Once again I am listening to Fred Baptiste as I work my way through Part 3 of the Deep Dive Python course on Udemy.

It has been a catalyst to many other changes in my life, a moving of home, a new relationship, a renewed passion for motorcycling but most of a hunger to make things better for the client I am working for. Looking at the data systems in place then figuring out ways to gather, clean, and then manipulate data brought me back to writing meaningful code for servers that had no way to access the data but through a web GUI. Led me back into Python, Selenium, XLSXWriter to extract the data. Pandas of course to clean and manipulate the data and finally get out meaningful information related to and useful to the project.

As a contract worker, I am also aware that there will be an end to this work. That isn't a bad thing, no. It means I have to ensure the code I write is pythonic, well documented, and understood by the staff that will remain after I have left. Hopefully, they will get the coding bug and look to dive a little deeper themselves but if they don't. At the very least I will have left tools that should be useful to them for a bit after I have gone.

So hurray and thank you to the people that brought me back to what I love to do. Live and Love my Life.