One of the difficult or (is it challenging ?) problems I have encountered in my journey as a data scientist is using and understanding GitHub. Understanding GitHub is a skill many developers take for granted. In my experience, people rarely talk about it and it is assumed everyone knows how it works.
Before I started learning Data science, I heard about "git" and "repos". I didn't know what it was but it didn't sound intimidating. My first experience with it came in the early stages of my journey into data science,( I am still in the early stages, kind of). I wanted to apply for an internship, I had to do some minor exercises in python and some simple tests on a dataset and put in on GitHub. At this stage, the exercise itself was a little beyond my skillset but I was going to try and I had 48 hours to do it. That became the beginning of my GitHub encounter. I didn't really think I was going to have problem at first, so I started on my exercises and I set up a phone appointment with a friend and bookmarked a series to articles and videos on Git and GitHub to read and watch. First things first I learnt I needed to download Git Bash. Soon after that, I was writing lines of code, learning terminologies and commands.
But afterwards I began to have doubts, how was my task going to get on GitHub, is there a Jupyter environment there where I could do it or is there a connection between the Gitbash on my desktop and my GitHub account that would transfer the folder?. These were the thoughts going on in my head but I had the internet and all its resources, I shouldn't have any serious problem or so I thought.
Unfortunately after hours of video tutorials I still could not solve the problem at hand, I did not know how my task was going to get on GitHub and I was suffering from information overload. I had learnt a lot of things but not that much about the problem at hand. In fact it went so badly, so much so that couple with my troubles with the exercises I never finished the tasks before time and developed a fear of ever using GitHub again in the bargain.
Two weeks later, I was in another internship and I had to upload my work on GitHub again. I was nervous but if I knew if I wanted to continue on this journey, this was something I had to know. I decided to just check and see for myself again. This time I played around on GitHub, created a repository ( a repository is like a folder on GitHub) and I started exploring and that was how I discovered I can upload files on GitHub from my computer. I can do my exercises on my computer and just upload afterwards. I did not need to speak Git and it was that simple. I was angry with myself for a while and upset about the opportunity I had missed. But this was an important experience for me because it taught me some very important lessons about the way I approach problems, one of which was that in this age of vast resources and self learning an important key is take only what you need at a particular time.
Also while I have not by any means mastered Git, (I am learning as the need arises), and this applies to other tech problems sometimes the answer is not always in code but in simple good old English, and although I am sure many people must have said this lots of times before but sometimes the best approach to a problem is to calm down and look at it properly through your own eyes.