#education/6 entries

I was excited to see that this is the first module in a new Coursera course I'm doing. I've long thought that ethics are missing from software development, and I think it's more important than ever to care about the consequences of what we're doing and building in this age of AI. This course on building agents literally opens with this statement:

This module is for professionals and data scientists aiming to build responsible AI.

I'm really heartened to see that building responsibly is becoming a legitimate concern, at least in some corners of the industry.

By bridging theory and practice, the program empowers you to lead initiatives that prioritize accountability, ensuring your AI systems deliver immense value without compromising integrity or public trust.

I'm looking forward to this.

The thing I hate most about AI is that it has made it very difficult to actually learn something new anymore. I have become convinced that if you already know what you are doing, AI can be quite cool. It definitely allows me to develop more and better software than ever before (which I'm not convinced yet is necessarily a good thing, but it is cool). The problem is, though, if you don't know what you're doing, AI has made it more or less impossible to tell what is true or not anymore. This is actually a huge problem for learning. If you don't know what you don't know, how can you possibly sift through the sheer volume of slop that has flooded the internet on whatever topic you're trying to learn about? This is actually a frustrating problem.

I know reddit is a real mixed bag, but I often find good information there. It seems like it's one of the last remaining places on the internet that's not dominated by SEO-optimized or AI-generated hooey. I started the Coursera course associated with the AWS Certified Data Engineer Associate exam and was looking for recommendations for more learning resources when I came across this. I haven't started it yet so I'm not sure how good it is, but in the past I've had a great time learning a lot from these types of community-made resources. I'm looking forward to checking it out.

It's also the first time I've ever heard of the DataTalksClub. I don't know anything about it but it's github profile makes it seem like type of online community I absolute love. I am super passionate about creating free learning resources for technologies I'm interested in and really admire people who have had success doing that in their own niches. I'm excited to join this community and see what happens!

This is a great book that appears to mirror much of the content from the Fundamentals of Data Engineering book by Joe Reis and Matt Housley. I'm finding it really satisfying this week digging more into the distinctions between data engineering, data science, data analysis, software engineering, and everything in between. I started out in very standard software development roles, building rails apps for various companies. My roles over the last few years have been decidedly not typical web development ones, but I'm never quite sure how exactly to explain what I do best. I feel like I'm finally on to something with all of this data engineering stuff.