Learning How to Code.

These days, I have picked up an interest in programming, more accurately, how to make stuff with python. Well, truth be told, it has been more than six months since I started. And for the entirety of the duration, I may have given it no more than 200 hours of effort and so far I have managed to learn how to make discord bots, some basic text-based games, and how to read codes written in python. That's an hour a day on average spent after learning it and I realize if I had been just a tiny bit more focused, I would have crossed the boundaries of being a beginner and now would start dabbling in intermediate codes. Well, I guess I am my own nemesis.

In any case, it has been a fun journey. I love the part when I write something very basic, hit run and the program works at the very get-go. Makes me feel a tiny bit accomplished even though the concept may have come from a youtube tutorial. But that is how one starts right?

I started around the time when I completed my post-grad last year. Criminology is a fascinating discipline to study and when I was called to get admitted, I was so surprised and excited! It was like I was destined or someshit. Simba's calling for greatness by fate to become the rightful king of his lion kingdom is what it was like. Then as time progressed, and I got to know more about what comes after my study, I was a bit heartbroken. My seniors who graduated before me were getting jobs in banks, NGOs, or the corporate world, or if they were brilliant, they were becoming either teachers or going abroad to study stuff like advanced statistics to become researchers. As I graduated, some of my classmates followed the same path, and a few who are gifted with talent and family fortune got to go places which to me are extremely envious. I am jealous of them as they managed to escape and pray that they become exceptionally successful human beings at the same time. Such innate duality of thoughts puts a rough dent in a person's psyche as they see in front of them what they could have become but couldn't.

One could argue that why don't I look for a job in law enforcement. The funny thing is I could have looked for a job in law enforcement even if I had not studied criminology. In this country, the life of a police officer does not offer anything but corruption. It is not like it's completely bad, but I don't want any part of it. What I wanted instead is to be an analyst, may it be forensic or investigative. But the qualification needed can not be attained here in this country. And the situation I am in right now doesn't offer it.

So I have figured out another way to contribute and that is where programming comes in. During my bachelor's degree, I did a monograph on crime mapping. I researched and created a map of my town, took the crime data of six types of crimes that occurred in the past few years from newspapers, and pinned them on the map. I couldn't get much data on my neighborhood as the local police station waved at me like a fly as I approached them for data so I was limited to secondary sources like newspapers and social media. But even then the map formed patterns of hotspots where a certain type of crime takes place in certain time frames. As my supervisor too was impressed, I realized this could be an actual tool that serves the community and maybe even at a greater scope.

Hence this is where me learning programming comes in. there were other motivating factors, to write about which would need me to explain boring details. If I could ever develop a tool, an application that simply hosts all the crime data collected or scraped from several sources and updates it to the map, and uses certain algorithms,(at this point in time, I have no idea about how to build this, none at all) to evaluate the safety of the user who's using the map and wants to go to place B from A, I personally think it could help deter a lot of crime from happening. There is a very popular modern theory called Routine Activities which states a crime takes place when 3 crucial elements come into play. An offender who is highly motivated, a suitable victim or a target, and the lack of a capable guardian. Take away the suitable victim and the crime never happens.

Imagine a woman who is alone and needs to go home late in night. She has access to such a tool, and her chances of being part of a violent crime all together may decrease by a few percent. At times, isn't that all that matters? There are such tools already existing but they are strictly for scholars, researchers, and law enforcement. Anyone can read the data but wouldn't understand how it may help them. our metropolitan police too have one. It doesn't function at all. And the functioning tools only exist in the developed world, none here. So, someone needs to try right?

I know it is a far-fetched dream and I know some might say, due to the amount of ADHD I have, soon I may stop pursuing this and become heavily invested in fish farming or something like that, but I know it's better to work with my issues rather than around. And the thought of even one life being saved is more motivation than all the other ted talks I could humanely watch combined.

_Pixabay