Help me become master of my doman...IT self help education
December 27, 2022 12:32 PM Subscribe
Help me become literate of the increasingly digital and web based reality growing larger around me.
As someone who has had some recent success getting into data analytics and wants to keep the good times rolling, here is what I'm interested in:
1) Data eventually hits the water's edge and you're there staring out at a hostile ocean of web interfaces and hardware. I want to better understand the hardware and wireware that is bringing me all of this data. I also want to understand what 'big boys' do with data at the corporate scale of data management which seems to inter-relate heavily with not just the business question at hand, but also how they've arranged their physical and virtual assets.
2) My friend is fond of saying, "in life you have to be your own general contractor...", with the implication that eventually the buck stops with you and you need to figure things out.
Increasingly with the types of projects I'm interested in and the needs of my home and work life (remote position) there's an IT component where my lack of understanding halts my ability to try to solve my own problems.
Some examples of projects I'd like to know better how to tackle:
- Better manage the quality of my internet service and its impacts on media consumption, web enabled devices and especially my remote work PC
- Looking at building a home based IT capability to link IoT(?) devices to a system that can receive their information in order to help make decisions. Here I'm considering monitoring devices on utilities (possibly including a solar array system), cam devices for home security or car, or health related devices like a fitbit.
- Be able to record media (audio or video) from streaming services, from zoom/video apps.
- Monitor the web activity of soon to be online children
- Make informed decisions about purchases of computer devices and making updates to electrical and internet services in the house
- Any number of hobby/work applications that involve data handling from web based sources
- Become a better troubleshooter of problems for friends and family
This is...broad? I know, I know. And I'm fully aware this will be a journey. A long one. And probably a losing one, as complexity of consumer technology accelerates past the lay person and 'closed' systems prevent one from knowing what's going on with your own stuff.
Still, I really want some way to start this journey. I expect a lot of advice might be along the lines of:
- Find a project to learn from and go!
- Lmgtfy, lmreddittfy, lmyoutubetfy, etc
- This is a fool's errand
I'm fine with responses like this, and I'm also fine with negative responses or those that think I'd benefit from reframing/refocusing this current description.
The more detail the better.
Thanks!
As someone who has had some recent success getting into data analytics and wants to keep the good times rolling, here is what I'm interested in:
1) Data eventually hits the water's edge and you're there staring out at a hostile ocean of web interfaces and hardware. I want to better understand the hardware and wireware that is bringing me all of this data. I also want to understand what 'big boys' do with data at the corporate scale of data management which seems to inter-relate heavily with not just the business question at hand, but also how they've arranged their physical and virtual assets.
2) My friend is fond of saying, "in life you have to be your own general contractor...", with the implication that eventually the buck stops with you and you need to figure things out.
Increasingly with the types of projects I'm interested in and the needs of my home and work life (remote position) there's an IT component where my lack of understanding halts my ability to try to solve my own problems.
Some examples of projects I'd like to know better how to tackle:
- Better manage the quality of my internet service and its impacts on media consumption, web enabled devices and especially my remote work PC
- Looking at building a home based IT capability to link IoT(?) devices to a system that can receive their information in order to help make decisions. Here I'm considering monitoring devices on utilities (possibly including a solar array system), cam devices for home security or car, or health related devices like a fitbit.
- Be able to record media (audio or video) from streaming services, from zoom/video apps.
- Monitor the web activity of soon to be online children
- Make informed decisions about purchases of computer devices and making updates to electrical and internet services in the house
- Any number of hobby/work applications that involve data handling from web based sources
- Become a better troubleshooter of problems for friends and family
This is...broad? I know, I know. And I'm fully aware this will be a journey. A long one. And probably a losing one, as complexity of consumer technology accelerates past the lay person and 'closed' systems prevent one from knowing what's going on with your own stuff.
Still, I really want some way to start this journey. I expect a lot of advice might be along the lines of:
- Find a project to learn from and go!
- Lmgtfy, lmreddittfy, lmyoutubetfy, etc
- This is a fool's errand
I'm fine with responses like this, and I'm also fine with negative responses or those that think I'd benefit from reframing/refocusing this current description.
The more detail the better.
Thanks!
Response by poster: Do you have an idea how things like Google Home/Homekit work, a basic familiarity with DRM, or an idea how the traffic shaping settings on your router work?
Good question! No
separate out your questions about datacentre-scale management from the home stuff
I believe you. And maybe there's very little overlap, but probably some, right? Or at least interesting learning from the ways in which they are different or the metaphors to describe them are somewhat similar?
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 1:13 PM on December 27, 2022
Good question! No
separate out your questions about datacentre-scale management from the home stuff
I believe you. And maybe there's very little overlap, but probably some, right? Or at least interesting learning from the ways in which they are different or the metaphors to describe them are somewhat similar?
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 1:13 PM on December 27, 2022
I would suggest seeking out more recently published beginner centric books (e.g. "For Dummies" series.) Also No Starch Press might have a few beginner level books of interest (e.g.) Books are often a more helpful reference than random internet articles because someone went through the effort to edit them to tell a cohesive story.
It sounds like you might want to start by learning how a computer and the internet "work." These topics (among others, possibly less relevant to your initial questions) are covered in an intro to computer science course.
Then you might want to learn more about the operating system you typically use (e.g. Windows 10), followed by databases and data lakes at a super high level. Then you might want to learn more about Raspberry Pi and/or Arduino.
In your first (or third) pass of the topics, I suggest skipping any (parts of) resources that include coding. At this stage coding is to far "in the weeds" for the high level understanding you are going for. As an analogy, an understanding of basic physics concepts would help the driver of a car know traction in a thunder storm == good, high speeds == high energy (bad news) in the event of a crash, but knowledge of the specific equations is not needed to operate a car safely and successfully.
Regarding which products to buy and how to troubleshoot X, realistically many people are googling to answer those sorts of questions since there's just too much to know and product availability changes all the time.
I concur that enterprise and home-based questions operate on very different scales. It's like Regular Joe asking Jeff Bezos for budgeting advice. For sure it's probably a good idea for both Regular Joe and Jeff Bezos to "minimize expenses," but Jeff Bezos can easily spend in one day what Regular Joe earns in a year with little negative consequence.
posted by oceano at 3:56 PM on December 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
It sounds like you might want to start by learning how a computer and the internet "work." These topics (among others, possibly less relevant to your initial questions) are covered in an intro to computer science course.
Then you might want to learn more about the operating system you typically use (e.g. Windows 10), followed by databases and data lakes at a super high level. Then you might want to learn more about Raspberry Pi and/or Arduino.
In your first (or third) pass of the topics, I suggest skipping any (parts of) resources that include coding. At this stage coding is to far "in the weeds" for the high level understanding you are going for. As an analogy, an understanding of basic physics concepts would help the driver of a car know traction in a thunder storm == good, high speeds == high energy (bad news) in the event of a crash, but knowledge of the specific equations is not needed to operate a car safely and successfully.
Regarding which products to buy and how to troubleshoot X, realistically many people are googling to answer those sorts of questions since there's just too much to know and product availability changes all the time.
I concur that enterprise and home-based questions operate on very different scales. It's like Regular Joe asking Jeff Bezos for budgeting advice. For sure it's probably a good idea for both Regular Joe and Jeff Bezos to "minimize expenses," but Jeff Bezos can easily spend in one day what Regular Joe earns in a year with little negative consequence.
posted by oceano at 3:56 PM on December 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
I am at a weird place when it comes to tech knowledge... I actually have a degree as Computer Engineer, and done IT for 10+ years, so I know both hardware and software (down to NAND gate level and boolean logic, up to app and database programming, and lots of projects in between both professional and school) so I know just about EVERYTHING, at least on the surface, of everything you talked about. I even took a couple data science classes and pretty familiar with Python and data science libs. With that out of the way, let's discuss your "needs".
How's your knowledge of database servers, data infrastructure, and Big Data? SQL? NoSQL like MongoDB? You'll need to understand those, and how they sync and shard with each other when it comes to data servers and data centers. That's more relevant to your data analytics, than "how does the Internet work", but it's a part of it.
Once you got those, you may be ready to dive to a deeper level, say, first or second level of the sewers, so to speak, as you start digging into how TCP/IP and modern internet works. Most people don't know or care how they get internet, but you will want to understand the OSI model, the different "layers" of information, from application level all the way down to physical media, and stuff in between. You can stay shallow and learn just enough, or if you want to gain a different set of skill, get some old A+ study guides (they release new ones every few years) and get some A+ study material, plenty of those free on Youtube and Internet (Professor Messer has monthly "labs" free on Youtube where he helps people prepare for the ceritifcation exams). The stuff may bore you. In which case, go shallow. :) But if you want to get a different certification, A+ is not a bad one to get.
If you want to go even deeper, on how computers tick, there are free games and programs that teach boolean logic with logic gates and such. Nand2tetris is one such.
Hope that helps somewhat.
posted by kschang at 12:20 AM on December 28, 2022
How's your knowledge of database servers, data infrastructure, and Big Data? SQL? NoSQL like MongoDB? You'll need to understand those, and how they sync and shard with each other when it comes to data servers and data centers. That's more relevant to your data analytics, than "how does the Internet work", but it's a part of it.
Once you got those, you may be ready to dive to a deeper level, say, first or second level of the sewers, so to speak, as you start digging into how TCP/IP and modern internet works. Most people don't know or care how they get internet, but you will want to understand the OSI model, the different "layers" of information, from application level all the way down to physical media, and stuff in between. You can stay shallow and learn just enough, or if you want to gain a different set of skill, get some old A+ study guides (they release new ones every few years) and get some A+ study material, plenty of those free on Youtube and Internet (Professor Messer has monthly "labs" free on Youtube where he helps people prepare for the ceritifcation exams). The stuff may bore you. In which case, go shallow. :) But if you want to get a different certification, A+ is not a bad one to get.
If you want to go even deeper, on how computers tick, there are free games and programs that teach boolean logic with logic gates and such. Nand2tetris is one such.
Hope that helps somewhat.
posted by kschang at 12:20 AM on December 28, 2022
This thread is closed to new comments.
Also, I think you can separate out your questions about datacentre-scale management from the home stuff - their concerns are wildly different than yours.
posted by sagc at 12:50 PM on December 27, 2022