I recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering and was all set to start with a Master’s degree in Transportation Engineering this fall. Unfortunately, my plans got pushed to the winter term because of COVID-19. So as of January this year, I have had no school and no work.

While looking at some of the research going on in my future grad school, I came across Machine Learning and Deep Learning being implemented in a lot of Transportation Engineering related research projects. At the time, I had no clue what ML, DL, or even Data Science as a whole was! So, I started looking into the subject. I talked to a few of my friends who are Computer and Software Engineers and what I understood from them was that Machine Learning is rooted in Statistics, Calculus, and Linear Algebra, all of which are some of my favorite math topics. I remember thinking to myself that I cannot let this opportunity go by, I was in a position where I had all the time in the world and unlimited resources (thanks to the internet!). In addition to that, I was going to enter a field that is being transformed by Data Science very rapidly and I needed to dip my toes into it.

I have always struggled with programming languages, I once started to learn Java but gave it up within 5 hours of starting. It was quite embarrassing as I had high hopes of developing android apps. Now that I think about it, I was just being lazy and impatient. But this time was different, I had to learn Python which is easier to grasp than Java and I found myself truly fascinated by this new field.

So, let’s jump right in! In this article, I will take you through the journey of how Iwent from being a complete newbie to a Google Certified TensorFlow Developer in less than 5 months.

1. Learn Python

There are a lot of resources available to learn Python from, both free tutorials as well as paid courses which give you a certificate for completion. I personally chose a certificate course as that provided me with a tangible form of credibility and kept me accountable. Coming from a non-coding background this was important to me. Here are some of the resources available;

CERTIFICATE COURSES

• This is the course I took to learn Python. I recommend this to anyone who does not have a coding background as this course covers all the fundamentals and is constantly updated. The best part is that you get lifetime access to all the materials and a certificate to prove that you have completed the entire course.

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