Drew Conway

Set up a Linux computer (Ubuntu Linux is the easiest to set up), and spend the summer learning to program in Python.

Python is easy to learn (not much syntax), easy to read (explicit vs implicit), has a big ecosystem (more packages/libraries), is taught at universities so it's easy to find good programmers to help, and is used by many large websites/companies so it's a good language to know.

Here are some of the best online Python tutorials, including a link to videos and course material for MIT's introductory computer science course, which uses Python: http://www.quora.com/How-can-I-learn-to-program-in-Python/answer/James-Thornton

Build something that you want to use so it will be meaningful to you. Do you have a blog? That's usually a good first exercise. It's easy to do using Flask -- follow the tutorial (http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/).

Here are some tips to get you started:

Use Emacs as the text editor to write your code -- it usually comes pre-installed on Ubuntu, and it has a Python mode. Here are some Emacs tutorials (there are some good videos on YouTube too):

http://philip.greenspun.com/teaching/manuals/usermanual/emacs.html http://www2.lib.uchicago.edu/keith/tcl-course/emacs-tutorial.html http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/ http://cmgm.stanford.edu/classes/unix/emacs.html

Use PostgreSQL as your database. To install it on Ubuntu, use this command:

$ sudo apt-get install postgresql

Use SQLAlchemy (http://www.sqlalchemy.org/) to connect your Python…

"We believe that the bar for training and hiring of front end JavaScript developers is even more attainable, and that is why we have chosen to be the first, and as of now, the only training program specifically for that market."

You know what I want--a twelve week, intense course on scientific computing in something like Python--for people who already know some core scientific subject and statistics. If we took http://www.drewconway.com/zia/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Data_Science_VD.png as a guide (and yes, yes, data science is just a name for something that has existed for twenty years), I want a program to move people from traditional research to data science.