What you don’t know won’t kill you, but believe me when I tell you, it will definitely drive you crazy. Especially when you think you know it, but something just doesn’t seem to jell. The truth is, if you don’t know something, then you really don’t know it. And until you know it, nothing will make sense. Everything will keep confusing you, and no matter how many ways you look at it or how many strategies you use to approach it, the result will remain the same.
It’s said that only a foolish person will do the same thing over and over and expect a different result. However, what do you do when you know that you’re doing something wrong, but you don’t know what exactly you’re doing wrong? How do you go about it when you don’t even know the genesis of your mistake, and thus, how do you fix it? And therein lies my problem, my dear friends.
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been learning a new course, Data Analysis. A course that I feel works well for me because I love telling stories, and I love data. With data, you can figure out patterns and also predict possible outcomes when certain factors come into play. And then, making all this easily understandable for anyone at all is where the storytelling bit comes in. And so far, I love it!
But then, as we all know, when it comes to learning new things, especially these tech courses, they can be stressful as hell! From Python to SQL… the whole lot of them. And what makes it even worse is the attention to detail. Although this software comes with inbuilt AI systems that immediately note minute errors so that they can be corrected at once.
But then, if you don’t know what you’re doing, even the error won’t make sense to you, and you won’t know how to correct it. On my course, I’ve been learning MySQL for a while now, and I have to say, I’ve been getting pretty good at it. It’s a great help when it comes to data cleaning, and the codes are not as complex as they could be with Python, which makes it all the more beautiful and easy to learn.
And to get better, I’ve been working on some projects, cleaning up datasets, and preparing them for further analysis. However, while I was doing that today, I realized an error in my code. It was just there at the side, a giant red X, telling me that I was wrong. There was also a red underline beneath the code, telling me to fix it. However, no matter how hard I looked at it, my naked eyes could see nothing wrong with the code.
After trying it a dozen different ways within the first thirty minutes, I had to return to my tutorials, hoping I would get some help there. It didn’t work, even though I basically followed the instructions to the letter, I was still getting that error. At this time, I was getting frustrated and a bit angry because it wasn’t making any sense. And with the way the platform is structured, you can’t run the code without fixing all possible errors, because if you run it anyway, you don’t get a result.
Yet, I still couldn’t get the code correctly. At the time, I had spent over an hour on the same code, and I was making no progress. I was considering leaving it so I could focus on my work for today and return to it later tonight. However, I decided to try one more thing before I clocked out. I searched on Google, I needed to find out why the particular code wasn’t working for me.
I asked Google, and it brought out some websites that were offering tutorials on the use of that particular code. And when I got to the examples, the answer suddenly jumped out at me! As in, it was something so obvious, I couldn’t even believe that I had missed it to begin with. I returned to the tutorial videos I was watching, and sure enough, I finally saw it. It had been staring at me all along, and I didn’t see it. Because I didn’t even know that was it.
And what was my mistake? A simple comma! I had failed to put in a comma in a part of the code, a place where a comma was very important at the start of the block. And this ruined everything on that particular block, so that when I ran it, I only got the ‘ERROR’ result. It was crazy. I immediately put in the comma where it should be, and when I ran it, I finally got the result I was expecting.
This may seem like something trivial to you, but it’s amazing how major projects can be derailed simply because of a simple detail that is overlooked. If you’re someone who is into programming and other tech-related fields, you’ll know how important details are because without them, you can be stuck in one spot for hours. And then, even when the software tells you where your error is and how to fix it, it might be hard for you to figure it out and work on it.
Anyway, I was able to get the job done, and I fixed it. I was able to finish up the project I was working on. And that was a major feat, meaning that I would move on to other ones later at night today. This course has not been easy, but so far, I’ve been challenged and I’ve been learning.
So, it’s a good day. Because it reminded me that as long as you don’t know something, then you don’t. But once you do know that thing, you’ll wonder how it was that you didn’t even know it all this while.
And that was how my crazy day started. I’m still looking forward to how the rest of it goes.
Posted Using INLEO
