Oct. 29, 2010 at 5:33pm with 2 notes
natedern asks:
Dear Hardcore Multiplier of Matrices:

I have an embarrassingly basic question for you. I'm starting to study sociology in grad school. I want to study online social media. I'm already learning that computer scientists, who can write programs to collect the data they're interested from social media sites, have pretty much got the market cornered in terms of gathering data. User data I could collect manually on Twitter, for example, is prohibitively time consuming compared to what a program can do. This goes without saying. So, my question is, if I wanted to learn how to, uh, program? Code? Where do I begin. My knowledge is so lacking that when I looked at a list of programing classes offered at my school, I realized I don't even know where to begin. Java? MATLAB? Something else? I apologize for this lengthy question. Here is a quicker version: if I want to learn enough about programming to write something that can collect user data (not private/personal data, but usage, things publicly available but that otherwise manually would require me visiting and tabulating info on thousands of individual pages), where should I start? Relatedly, how naive am I being? Am I looking at a one (or two or five?) year learning curve before I could become literate enough to do anything worthwhile?

Thank you SO MUCH in advance. I bow before your knowledge.

-nate

Hi Nate!

There is no need to bow. Seriously, it’s weird.

I wrote a really long response to your questions (although the actual answer isn’t very long) and then posted it on my other blog because it was so long and Tumblr’s answer box is, like, four lines tall.

You’re not being naïve, I totally have faith that you can learn enough to do what you want. Maybe it would take a year to be sort of comfortable doing it. But it will definitely be worth your time.

In fact, I learned Perl and SQL because I had to maintain some code written by a social scientist. I worked in a lab where we gave people laptops with newfangled “wireless cards” and in exchange we monitored their web usage. (It turns out if you web surf during lecture your grades get worse!)

P.S. Your Weekend Update bit on Monster Night Live was some really great acting. Probably my favorite part of the show. (The writing was also great, Brett.)

  1. benzado posted this