From Zero Experience to Database Migration — One Learner's Data Story
Solange Van Der Kolff, Software Engineer
Solange Van Der Kolff has a familiar story — after finishing a master’s degree in 2018, she realized she didn’t feel like working in the field she’d studied for. So, she took a test at a programming school, and she fell in love with the career freedom and creativity, as well as the many applications where programming is useful. Van Der Kolff wanted to contribute to society in a practical way, and with programming skills, she felt she could create something useful in any field.
No sooner had she gotten started in her programming career than she became responsible for database migration and building applications — skills that she hadn’t yet mastered. That brought her to Dataquest.
Learning with Dataquest
Dataquest and Van Der Kolff were a perfect match. She feels that she got the precise information she needed for her new responsibilities, and it was provided in a visually pleasing way. Van Der Kolff appreciated that not only was she learning theory, she was also exploring plenty of examples in the projects, and that helped really reinforce understanding — and to code by herself.
Working in Data
At Dataquest, Van Der Kolff learned data wrangling, data cleaning, Python, data analysis, data visualization, data aggregation, and SQL. About her time with the platform, she says, “Without Dataquest, I wouldn’t have learned as quickly, and maybe I would have overlooked different options to tackle the database migration.”
Today, she applies what she learned setting up databases and cleaning and wrangling data — basically all of the skills necessary for database migration. Before Dataquest, she had never managed a migration, but now it’s a part of her daily routine.
Advice for Learners
Van Der Kolff encourages data science learners to be consistent and dedicate time to complete courses every week, “so the new skills you learn have the time to sink in. There is a lot of material and projects that you will have to complete, and on some projects you will need more time to practice and learn what there is to learn!”