I was not a developer but a doctor who has found himself inexorably dragged into the world of coding. And I'm loving every minute of it...

I remember writing my first program creating a sprite - this was way, way back - and have always kind of peeked over the shoulders of the titans of code, never understanding the gibberish they write but admiring them for their skill and the value they bring to our world.

Then I had to learn a little /html/ and messed around a little with JavaScript on a few occasions. I also had a couple of near-misses with VBA, but in all I managed to avoid learning how to code. In the course of my work I had to learn how to use CDC's EpiInfo, and at the time I realized that if I knew how to code, I could have done a lot more with it. I was spared that burden with the release of EpiInfo 7 which is really user-friendly (or dummy-friendly).

Then it happened. I took a refresher course in Data Analysis and they were using R throughout. Being an SPSS person, I was initially a little upset that I was being forced to code, but I had to go through with it. That was how it actually began - as it were, by force. By a stroke of fate, the machine were I had SPSS installed got bad - we had a major project to undertake and I had no option other than to conduct the analysis with open-source tools i.e. R.

As I continued to learn to use R, I realized that there is a gap in this kind of knowledge where I live and I decided to tutor a few colleagues as well as develop some data products that would be useful in my environment. So I had to learn a lot more about R and coding in general. And because I observed that R is built on C/C++, I saw the need to learn C++.

I see myself more as an aspiring data scientist, as my work focuses a lot more on biostatistics and environmental health. Programming is key and you guys are gonna see a lot of me here going forward.