Perennial question – how much do I need to know to achieve my goals? Especially when I’m not 100% clear on what my goals are.
In all my studies of ML lately I’m frequently confronted by an inadequate understanding of the basic language. I’d like to become much more fluent in Python, but that’s actually a big job. My current reading, on Reinforcement Learning, adopts a ‘create code from scratch’ approach which I appreciate, but that rabbit hole is looking pretty deep.
I’ve reached the part where they are making extensive, and sophisticated, use of iterators and generators to implement certain functions. RL by nature involves very iterative functionality. So, I’m feeling the need to have a better understanding of iterators and generators, and I already have just the course, or courses, on that. Fred Baptiste has some excellent courses on basic Python functionality (basic as in out of the box, not involving third party libraries such as pandas or scikit-learn). However, each of the fours courses is about 40 hours of content. He’s very thorough. But course 2, which includes iterators and generators, definitely builds on material from course 1, especially scope and closures. That’s a lot of material. And all just so that the book I actually want to study is more accessible. And it’s all just a pastime anyway. So what else might I be doing with my life?
I had a strong interest in computer graphics for about 15 years, mostly 3D but also some digital painting, and spent a lot of time doing courses and workshops, and just creating work. Far more than the time I’m now looking at getting to the next level in Python programming. I have another blog documenting that, sadly now rather neglected.
Fortunately I do have a trading system up and running. There’s some satisfaction in that even if it does need a lot more work to improve it. This makes actually putting time into relevant work not so frustrating. Slogging along with no light at the end of the tunnel can be demotivating, but that’s not where I am at the moment.