Anyone can learn anything
Coming from a molecular biology background I briefly learnt bioinformatics and R and was lucky enough to attend a beginner’s python course, it was a great introduction and I decided to take this further by improving on these skills during my PhD.
If you are going to teach yourself (go for it, it’s easier than you think!) there are a few tips I have found helpful over the years:
1. Learn how to google.
This may sound silly but learning how to phrase your questions for a search engine becomes a very valuable skill, particularly if you want to find solutions to a particular coding problem that may have been solved in several different ways already (there are a lot of coding humans out there).
2. Break it down.
If you are writing scripts or more complicated programs for your research break the problems down into pieces, as a series of smaller problems that can be solved with for example, functions. Then work out what you can solve that will then take you to the next problem until you have finally solved the entire thing. I find it helps to start with the smaller jobs going backwards. The best thing about being able to code is you can solve a problem any way that you like so it doesn’t matter if you think differently to others, in fact this is an advantage, you can get creative!
3.Try online courses.
Online courses from learning sites such as Coursera, Data camp and even LinkedIn have helped me a lot. Most of the time the courses were free, though a couple I have paid for.
4.Find other self learners or experts willing to share some wisdom.
A large part of the learning process involves not just theory but application and importantly where to even start, what tools to use when learning and the quirks of these particular tools. This is particularly challenging if you are moving between fields where you will likely have to learn new terminology and may not yet know how to phrase a question in a way that will get you the right answer.
One of the reasons for this blog is to help with this by providing very basic instructions, what tools to use to practice and how you can check your own coding.
5.Be patient and persevere.
In the beginning it will be frustrating, your mind will be learning not only new terminology but a whole new way of problem solving and it’s inevitable you will have other things vying for your attention in your life that will distract you. As with any skill, bioinformatics and coding get easier with practice but don’t be too hard on yourself, slow and steady wins the race!