Into the Darkness

Onward!

I once found some wise words in a web comic. I read this cartoon years ago, but the concept has since lingered in the back of my head. The idea is that it takes seven years to master something, so assuming we are lucky enough to live into our middle to late ages, we have several opportunities to reinvent ourselves and master new things. The author divides each of these seven years into discrete time intervals he describes as lifetimes.

Taking the author's idea literally, I have spent my last two lifetimes on computer science and software engineering. That is not to say that I have mastered those subjects by any means. Very few will ever master such topics, and even if they do, there is always more to be discovered. However, I do feel comfortable in these fields. And with that comfort there is an underlying uneasiness. A sort of nervousness perpetuated by complacency.

Comfort leads to rust. An idle mind atrophies. But there is catharsis in the pursuit of knowledge. The curious may wander, but they are never lost. And so with that, I turn away from the comfortable, familiar surroundings of software engineering, and into the cold unknown darkness of Data Science.