I’m terrified as I write these words. Not because I’ve been summoned by Queen Cersei or because I’m fighting the White Walkers alongside Jon Snow. No. I wish I was, though. Ok, almost. I’m terrified because this is my first step in blogging. Few years back, when I was younger, I probably would’ve been care-free. But now, now that I know how much words matter, I tend to be cautious when talking or writing. Once it’s out there, it is out there. But that’s no excuse.
Few months back, I decided to test the waters with R. Up until then, I had been using Stata. We had a steady relationship, but somewhere along the way we started to grow apart. Stata had newer, stronger, better versions released while I kept using the one I acquired during my graduate studies (late 2000’s!). In truth, I stayed behind. Well, not entirely. I started to feel strongly about “open-source”. Between my first encounter with Stata and our break-up, I came to discover the joys (and sometimes the tribulations) of open-source programs and systems. My heart keeps beating for Ubuntu, but for practicals reasons (working in a Windows-dominated environment), I have to postpone our reunion. We’ll be together one day. One sweet day a great song, by the way. I also enjoyed my time with QGIS. For some time, it made feel like a God, a God of Maps. But outside the projects where I needed maps, we didn’t hang out very much (after all, that’s all it can do). And also, I found it hard to navigate between different programs (Stata there, QGIS here, a database there,…). With time, the distance between us grew wider. One thing, though. I’m to blame, partially. I didn’t bother to master SQL to skip the middle man (in this case, Stata), to access directly my databases from QGIS. Anyway…water under the bridge.
My relationships with those tools had their on-and-off moments like Ross and Rachel. Sure, I had my share of sleepless nights trying to figure out why my system was behaving strangely, or trying to take over a document created by a colleague under another system and with another program (imagine MS Office versus LibreOffice). But, overall, I got a glimpse of the possibilities that lie ahead. With the release of new versions on regular basis, the pace at which bugs are fixed, it seems like open-source stands and will remain among the forces the technological innovations Thomas Friedman of New York times writes about those things so eloquently. More than I ever could. Go read him!. And also, many of those programs and systems are free! And that is a practical reason that trumps all the other practical reasons.
Back to R. Last year, I had a moment of…epiphany. Considering all the history I shared with Stata, the flings I had with Ubuntu and QGIS, and the better tomorrow I see in open-source (Ok, the free part played a major role, I admit it), I decided to take a leap, to switch to R. That meant rewriting countless lines of codes, scripts it’s taken me years to write. But, most importantly, it meant learning a new language and understanding a new environment. I went online to get some tutorials. I got many for free, but I didn’t have a structure, a methodology to ease my way into R and work my way up. Then, I found DataCamp (let me say this right away: they’re not paying to say that!). I tried it, liked it and kept it. In few months I went through a huge track, Data Science with R. I took a break for few weeks, and started another one Quantitative Analyst with R. I’m still on it. Every once in while, I try some other courses outside my track (it’s not what it looks like, it means nothing! I barely remember their names!).
The whole experience has been eye-opening. All I can think to myself is why I didn’t switch sooner. In fact, I could’ve because I had courses on R during my undergraduate studies. I didn’t bother to attend because, well, I didn’t think skipping them would hurt my grades (it did!), or that in the future I would work as a data analyst (as opposed the great Professor of Internal Economics I though I would become). Hey, better late than never. Right? I found in R a place I think I want to call home for a very, very long time. And, in all honesty, RStudio has a lot to do with it (I’m not being paid by RStudio to say that!). I get to stay in one place and do a lot, from writing new scripts or translating old ones (from my Stata days - imagine when you have to pick up clothes from your ex’s appartment. Akward!), to creating amazing graphs and maps with ggplot2 (sorry QGIS, R really does all I need), to writing reports or articles with Latex (Texmaker, we had a good run, didn’t we?). And that’s wonderful.
And now, this blog. My switch to R came along with (or went from) a desire to experience or even be a part of what makes this time in history particular (well, in my humble opinion). And that is how connectivity is enabling us to share, to collaborate and to work collectivitely. That’s a huge opportunity (for me, but I guess for many other people as well), one that I’m only starting to take the measure of. I am an African, born, raised and living in Africa. Being from that part of this world, where the challenges to overcome are countless, connectivity seems to offer one the most promising avenues to a better place. I’ve been able to learn new skills without having to put my life on hold, without having to travel to the West to attend a prestigious university (I wouldn’t mind doing that, though. Just so you know). I simply had to go online and find what I was looking for. So I decided to stay online, to share my experience and to start new projects that, I hope, I’ll get to collaborate with other people on. I also started this blog because, being a part of this century, this globalized and increasingly computerized world, standing on the sideline is not a choice, but a sentence. The pace of technological advancement is such that one can’t afford to look away too long. And, luckily, we don’t have to. Finally, with this blog, I’m trying here to overcome my fears. My fear of words, but also my fear of criticism. I have been fortunate to be a part of various projects. And, sometimes, I’ve been foolish enough to start few of my own. And now, I realize I have the opportunity to dust them off, share them with other people they might be useful to as well.