Python: for another day

It took a complete year of deliberation, but I finally decided on an undergraduate specialization: Global Political Economy. After applying for it, the euphoria from having been freed of the dilemma must have left me feeling adventurous. Economic and politics used to be foreign to me; but I learned, struggled, and came to like them at the end of my first year in university. If I pulled that off, then SURELY I could excel in any other field of my choosing, right? That’s why I also applied for a computing module. Boy, did I learn.

Do you know the feeling of spending hours foraging for something, only to find it hiding in a place you never consider searching? That, in a nutshell, was my experience from a month of learning Python. In coding, the bug blends into lines of loops, functions, punctuations, and algebra. The bug moves too – you fix one, and it emerges somewhere else. Like Whack-a-Mole in a forest of code; conventionally fun to play with, but disheartening when more important work piles up.

By the fourth week of learning, the forest of code felt like the Amazon. There was other work to do – days of economics and history readings were overdue, and I couldn’t start writing essays without reading them first. They were piling up like an impending avalanche, like a spark of fire in the rainforest. Should I have given up coding, then? Withdrawing from the module would confirm that I couldn’t do anything I put my mind to. Withdrawing also meant accepting that I'm not made for the lucrative tech field. And on the other hand, staying would prove that I’m a fighter. Even if other subjects suffered, isn’t perseverance, after all, one of the most important values in schooling? So, I stayed to fight for another week.

By the fifth week of learning Python, the forest caught on fire. There were too many moles and my skills were no-where near good enough to find them. Deadlines passed. My mind was in a frenzy, and one afternoon, after a jog to clear my mind, I finally withdrew from the module.

I realized that I was fighting the wrong battle. I wasn’t supposed to be fighting the Amazon fire; I was supposed to be focusing on my primary major – learning about the global political economy. The decision felt liberating, like a fireman returning from battle. That day, I immersed myself into pages after pages of reading (words, not code. Bless).

The Python experience whacked me upside down. In hindsight, perhaps I was the mole instead. That month, I learnt the importance of focus. And working on my strengths. If I were being honest, I signed up for coding classes because I feared missing out on the gold rush towards artificial intelligence. Can I still find a career in that field with a background in the soft sciences? I hope so. My priority, for now, is to focus on what I’m good at and what I love doing – reading and writing about the world – and surely, my career would be alright. Python can wait for another day.

Note (2025): This was the time before GenAI. Learning code is now much easier (though a tad bit less relevant) with ChatGPT.