<story><title>Learn Python The Hard Way: a new book by Zed Shaw</title><url>http://learnpythonthehardway.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>starkfist</author><text>&lt;i&gt;You are much better off using code as your secret weapon in another profession&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;In what fields is this true? What is the metric of &quot;better off?&quot; More money? More &quot;respect?&quot;</text></item><item><author>wanderingmarker</author><text>A nice quote from the last chapter:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Programming as a profession is only moderately interesting. It can be a good job, but if you want to make about the same money and be happier you could actually just go run a fast food joint. You are much better off using code as your secret weapon in another profession.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Well said, Zed. Very well said indeed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gte910h</author><text>Marketing: You can analyze and check your data 100-1000x faster than your co-workers. Hell, you can make entire vendors obsolete. Additionally: Making graphs without opening Excel shaves days of work off your year.&lt;p&gt;Biology: You can catalog and simplify your workflow by breaking things up and correctly keeping them all organized while doing things the fast way.&lt;p&gt;Author: You create smart searches, web spiders, pattern recognition (to capture your repetitive sections) and you learn formatting. Additionally, the text editor skills are &lt;i&gt;very&lt;/i&gt; nice for some types of writing.&lt;p&gt;Automotive/Racing: Calculating gear ratios? Analyzing race data? Optimizing pit stops? Not everyone is a formula one racer.&lt;p&gt;Small Businesses: Automated Scheduling of Clerks/floorpeople, inventory managment, loss detection.&lt;p&gt;Fashion: Modeling (no pun intended) cloth usage by shape cuts, number of seams required, etc.</text></comment>
<story><title>Learn Python The Hard Way: a new book by Zed Shaw</title><url>http://learnpythonthehardway.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>starkfist</author><text>&lt;i&gt;You are much better off using code as your secret weapon in another profession&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;In what fields is this true? What is the metric of &quot;better off?&quot; More money? More &quot;respect?&quot;</text></item><item><author>wanderingmarker</author><text>A nice quote from the last chapter:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Programming as a profession is only moderately interesting. It can be a good job, but if you want to make about the same money and be happier you could actually just go run a fast food joint. You are much better off using code as your secret weapon in another profession.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Well said, Zed. Very well said indeed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hyperbovine</author><text>Business consulting. They look at you like a wizard.</text></comment>