Years ago, I was curious and excited when I stepped into the investment field. While learning cutting-edge technology and trending business models is fantastic, it didn't take long before I found myself stuck in repetitive stuff and complex data. When I tried to figure out how to solve such problems, coding provided a practical and brilliant way, and I gradually became a self-taught developer. I'm on my journey to becoming a full-stack developer right now.

Automate boring stuff without tears

Here is the thing.

I need to follow start-ups in pharmacy and semiconductors weekly on a website, including their basic information, financing history, primary products and services, etc., and write a report. This tedious copy&paste work was time-consuming and often took up a whole afternoon.

Then, Al Sweigart's excellent book Automate the Boring Stuff with Python inspired me to find solutions in Python. So my coding journey began; I learned Python from zero and started my first hands-on project simultaneously. While Python is renowned for its beginner-friendly characteristic, I struggled initially but never quit.

With months' effort(debugging most time, of course 😂), I finally launched my first ever web scraper written in Python, powered by Beautiful Soup. Such tiny scripts could crawl data from specified websites and store them in a local excel file, and it could surprisingly complete all my tasks in a few minutes.

This is the first time I felt the power of coding.

Solve real problems with flexible models

Business valuation is another annoying task in investment, requiring different kinds of data, and your results are sensitive to minor changes in key factors and fundamental assumptions. So, getting adequate data efficiently from various sources is the key to making precise predictions, and I wonder if I could address this with code 🤔

That's when APIs come to help.

When I learned how to combine Python with proper APIs, getting the exact clean data I need becomes much more accessible. After that, I could concentrate more on the accuracy of the valuation model instead of dealing with scattered data on the internet. Most importantly, I could use data from past periods to validate my valuation models in secs and adjust the inputs easily.

Explore the unknown unknowns

Everyone is smart until they start writing it down. Before I started programming, I used to think I understood how investment works. However, when I needed to transform that knowledge into codes, my oversimplified understanding usually bottlenecked the work other than the actual coding skill. Then, I realised I had failed to grasp its essentials--there were so many beautiful new things I didn't know existed.

Through such experience, I not only acknowledged the gap between know-what and know-how but also explored the unknown unknowns, which could definitely meet one's curiosity. To some extent, coding is becoming a knowledge-management tool for me right now. I use that to organise my thoughts by trying to solve problems more innovatively and gain insights into new ideas while learning from my blind spots.

Conclusion

I started my developer journey mainly because of the urge to complete dull tasks quickly and enjoy my afternoon. Still, after that, I was attracted by the efficiency and elegance coding could bring to my work. The most amazing part about coding is that it allows you to transform ideas into reality 🤯

I still enjoy programming, and the process of solving tricky puzzles while listening to my favourite city pops is so much fun. "It worked" just like a cybered version of "Eureka!" with the same excitement, but when we think backwards, it all started with a simple "Hello World."

Cheers.