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Writer's pictureKen Jee

How YouTube Literally Helped Save codebasics Life (Dhaval Patel) - KNN Ep. 82

Updated: Feb 26, 2022


Dhaval Patel is a data engineer at Bloomberg (EX: NVIDIA). He has 17 years of industry experience and has worked in different big tech companies mainly as a software engineer. He runs a youtube channel called codebasics where he teaches data science, machine learning, Python, data structures and algorithms, and career guidance.


 

Transcription:


[00:00:00] Dhaval: When I was watching this movie, the princess switch, they had this dialogue, that life is what happens when you're busy, planning other things. I never planned YouTube. I never thought I would be teacher. I never ever thought I would be a teacher right now. I consider myself more of a teacher than a software engineer. I just absolutely loved teaching.

[00:00:31] Ken: This episode of Ken's Nearest Neighbors is powered by Z by HP. HP's high compute, workstation-grade line of products and solutions. Today, I had the pleasure of interviewing my friend and fellow YouTuber Dhaval. Patel. Dhaval is a data engineer at Bloomberg, formerly Nvidia, who has 17 years of industry experience and has worked in different big tech companies, mainly as software engineer. He runs an incredible YouTube channel called codebasics where teaches data science, machine learning, Python, data structures and algorithms, and career guidance. In this video, we learned about the origins of the codebasics YouTube channel, how Dhaval found his way to the U.S. From India and how teaching quite literally saved his life.

I hope you enjoy our conversation. I found it incredibly inspiring. And I just love talking to Dhaval. Thank you so much for coming on the Ken's Nearest Podcast. You were one of my first friends on YouTube. And for those that don't know, Dhaval runs the incredible codebasics YouTube channel, which is a place where I go to learn a lot of information earlier about programming.

And then now to really refresh a lot of my data science knowledge and techniques. So thank you so much for coming in, and I'm so excited to be able to share your story with the community.

[00:01:43] Dhaval: Thanks for enlightening me, Ken.

[00:01:47] Ken: Awesome. Well, you know, as I've mentioned, you were one of the first people that sort of welcomed me into this community.

We had some, a lot of earlier collaboration and I'm really happy it's could come full circle and I could help to kind of tell your story as well. Here, you, you have such an awesome journey through content creation, how it helps you to sort of overcome adversity and manage a lot of your own personal life as well, which I think is very powerful.

Before we get into that incredible story, I would like to first learn about how you got interested in data and the technology domain, where did that interest start from? Was it this spark or was it this slow progression?

[00:02:26] Dhaval: It was a slow progression. I graduated as a computer science student as a computer science BTech in computer science back in India in year 2003. So it has been more than 17 years that I've been working as a programmer. My interest in data came in play only last few years when I joined Bloomberg, which is a major financial data analytics company. And I was hired in Bloomberg as a software engineer, but since we deal with a lot of data, you kind of play this, you know, multiple roles. Although I'm a software engineer, I can call part of me is a data scientist as well as data engineer and software architect. So, so I kind of play multiple roles in my job. So, yeah, working in a company that deals heavily with data and analytics, that's where I got my interest in data analytics.

I didn't plan it out. It just just happened naturally.

[00:03:36] Ken: That's awesome. Well, I think, you know, Bloomberg, I've had a couple of people from Bloomberg as well on the podcast before, and it seems like the company itself does a really good job at sort of sharing the work of software engineers and data scientists which is kind of a unique thing.

A lot of times they're siloed, but it seems like at that specific company, at least in some specific roles, there's some crossover, which I think speaks to sort of the, the broad nature of data science roles. Right. You really never know what you get. And also there's an opportunity to make a lot of these things your own.

Can you talk me a little bit through sort of your career progression? So for example, you mean, you mentioned that you were, you grew up in India. How did you land your first role in the U.S. what was that journey like for you?

[00:04:23] Dhaval: I grew up in India and 2003, I became a you know, I had my degree in, in a BTech in computer science.

Then I started working as a Visual C++ programmer. So I was building an application on health handheld devices. You know, this is before the iPhone and the whole smartphone revolution began. So then I was coding in Visual C++ then I join and video as a device driver program. This was again in India.

So then we'd have, we all know it's an, it's a graphics card manufacturer back in those days. And really, I was mainly into gaming. I mean, they still design GPUs, but the purpose for those GPUs was to help people, you know, improve their experience on games. And nowadays they are into deep learning and all sorts of things, but I've worked there for two years as a device driver programmer.

And then I came to us in 2007 on a consulting job. So I was working in UPS as a consultant. And again, I was doing their application development in Visual C++. So I have been this like C++ guy, you know, who has worked with this statically combined languages. And back in those days these dynamic languages were not popular.

JavaScript and Python were there, but they were not the main citizen. If you go to any organization. Yeah. It's all combined. And you use JavaScript for some ad hoc things for, you know, your website related things and Python? No one heard about Python. Although Python is an old language, many people think that Python is a new language.

It's I think it was invented in 1995 or something. It is pretty old, but it was not popular at all. Then after working in UPS for two years, I on one fine day, I got a job. I got a call from Bloomberg and they had some position a full stack C++ engineer. I applied. I did not know about this company back in those days, and friend of mine told me that, dude, this is, this is a very good company. Like, just be serious in your interview preparation. I mean, you know, as a young engineer, I was so naive and I wasn't serious about planning my career. So I took the things as it, as it came my way, I did not plan things specifically.

Then I started, I got hired at at Bloomberg and I moved to, you know, this area, like New York, like more kind of have where the culture is more fast paced. You know, the innovation happens. So especially if you live in viscose or east coast, near New York, the benefit that you get is you work in this amazing fast paced, metropolitan, innovative culture, and you kind of grow a lot.

I started working in Bloomberg. I came in contact with so many smart folks and I, you know, I felt like I developed holistically in my previous job. I would just work as a programmer where our requirement document is given to you with all the unit screenshots and everything. And your hard job is just to translate those UX mock-ups in a working code, but that isn't the case with companies like Bloomberg, Google, Facebook, and all these tech companies.

You are a full stack engineer. So you take charge of product requirement, design technology, innovation deployment in directing with, with clients. You play this diverse role where you are, you are working as a true engineer and you kind of build this diverse skillset. So I grew a lot during my 10-year at Bloomberg.

I finished 10 years last year actually. And the journey has been so amazing. In past five to seven years, what has happened is dynamic languages like Python has grown in popularity, exponentially and Bloomberg as a company also adopted this language. Many. This is a trend you are seeing across the industry where Python is becoming a first-class citizen.

In most of the organizations previously, you know, people would be skeptical that it's a scripting language. What performance, what about runtime matter? Things like that. But. Many companies adopted by tune as a first-class citizen. They saw the benefit of rapid prototyping, you know, developing things faster.

And now a lot more people are confident that Python can be used as a main programming language. So that's what I've been working on. And my association with data started the moment I joined Bloomberg because Bloomberg deals with so much financial data, and we're always building solutions around, you know, this humongous volume of data, that Bloomberg processes.

So that's how I got interested into data. And my, although my role is more like a software engineer and data engineer. My passion and my interest and my curiosity kept on growing in this field. And I started reading a lot of books. I started attending conferences, for example, I attend JupyterCon...

I mean, that's one benefit of living near New York, that there are so many amazing conferences happening in the city. And I make sure I attend at least one or two conferences every year. And then we, in my company also, we have a lot of internal trainings, you know, internal seminars going on. So I, although that, then there, I learn a new thing every single day.

I mean, that has been my habit that I want to spend at least half an hour to one hour learning new things. And yeah, the journey has been amazing so far as part of my career is going to.

[00:11:01] Ken: That's awesome. So there's a couple things that I think are incredible that I want to pull out of that. So the first is just for clarification for people listening.

Can you articulate the difference between a dynamic and a compiled programming language? Just in case they're not familiar? I mean, obviously we know that Python is a dynamic language, something like Java or C or C plus plus is a compiled, but what exactly does that mean? Just so everyone's on the same page.

[00:11:28] Dhaval: Okay. Yeah. It's a good question. So C plus plus, and Java, these two are two popular combined languages. So when you write a core, you have to first combine it, meaning you have to translate that core into some intermediate state. And then that intermediate state is that compile code is then given to you're in the end, you know, the microprocessor, the CPU.

Is executing that code and CPU understands assembly language. So you hope to eventually translate your code into assembly language. And same thing happens with dynamic languages like Python and JavaScript as well. But in C plus plus, and Java, you are responsible to translate your code to this intermediate state, which is compatible with all the grammar rules, all the data typing needs that the programming language demands.

So now you have this additional responsibility that you're making sure that your data types are defined properly and your code can be combined. And once you, as a program, that you have to make sure that, and once it is compiled, then it gets translated into machine level. With languages like Python and JavaScript, which are also dynamic languages or the other term that they use is interpreted languages.

You just write code, you don't have to worry about compiling it. Eventually it gets translated into machine code, but that additional responsibility is taken away from you. So the benefit that you get is you can, your code development speed increases. I have worked as a C++ programmer for a long time.

And once I moved to Python, my code development speed increase at least 5x. We live, we live in a world of rapid prototyping. You want to just rapidly prototype something, get it out, test it on a small set of beta users. If the idea doesn't work, you want to just throw away that that thing. And you want to start fresh with a new thing.

So in this Agile word, Python and JavaScript, dynamic languages help you get things out faster. If you do the same thing in C++/Java is going to take you a lot more time. And that is one of the reasons why these languages are picking up very fast.

[00:14:04] Ken: Awesome. And so, from what I understand on the flip side of that is that.

Compiled languages. They actually run a little bit faster. That's why a lot of financial institutions still do a lot of things in C or in C plus plus is because the execution time is faster rather than like the necessarily compile time. And so with the advancements in compute and GPUs and all these things, that's becoming kind of less and less important as we go because our hardware is now catching up and, and it's like, okay, those previous things that we needed that would take X amount of time, that would save us because of the language differences.

That difference is becoming just a smaller and smaller and, and these languages that are, you know, as you said, dynamic or interpreted are increasingly valuable. Something I also wanted to touch on and explore a little bit further is sort of that initial transition into the U.S. Like what were some of the, the changes in sort of culture and the, and the changes in moving in.

I mean, you know, you described that, that first role that you actually got reached out to. How do you, how does someone set themselves up to be reached out to, you know, is it you're working in something that's in just such high demand that the capacity in the U.S. Cannot be met. And so people reach out to other countries to even bring them here?

Or what, what would that process look like? What would be your advice for someone who wants to land a job in the U.S. Like that.

[00:15:38] Dhaval: Back in days when I came to us in 2007 it was lot easier to get a job in U.S. And directly come here. As of 2021, that situation is, is very different. So in 2007, I started working with a consulting company.

So I applied from India in that consulting company. And I had a couple of my friends already working in that company. So networking definitely helped me. And they had good experience with this company. Of course you are going to the other part of the earth, you know, like U.S. And they're like, so far apart, not close, not close.

Yeah. I want to meet my parents. I have to travel 22 hours in a plane, so long journey. And the culture, everything is so different here. So 2007, I, through my network, I came in contact with this consulting company and they were hiring programmers. And at that time, of course, programmer, even today, the demand of programmers is increasing day by day.

But at that time, there are not many people who are trained to be a computer programmer. Being programmed in C plus plus, and Java is little tough actually. Nowadays people attend this three month, six month bootcamp, they learn Python and some language, and they've just get started with their programming career easily.

They get even a job back in those days when you're dealing with C plus plus, for example, your, you have to do memory management on your own. You know, you have to deal with pointers as valid like that and set fault and all that. It's not fun for sure. And not many people could do it. So that role was in demand.

And obviously U.S. had so much demand for computer engineers that through disconcerting companies, it was easy to come here. So that's how I came here, started working at UPS as the application developer, I still remember, you know, when you get this UPS brown box package, that sticker that you get the shipping label.

I mean, I was working on that application that would print that shipping label. So I worked on some of those feature enhancements.

[00:18:14] Ken: That's incredible. And so, you know, since it has changed, like what advice would you give someone that's trying to make that transition or would you even not recommend them come to the U.S. on that front?

I think that a lot of people that I've spoken to particularly I think, who is the four-time Kaggle Grandmaster, you know, I don't, I don't know if he would actually, you know, consider coming to the U.S. you know, Europe or other places around the world offer really good options, you know, is that something.

How would you fall on that issue?

[00:18:50] Dhaval: If anyone wants to come to U.S., there are two options which are most convenient. One is you come here for masters. After you do your masters, you get this three-year OPT, which is your optional, practical training, where you don't have to worry about your H1 visa.

Being a STEM student, you get this three-year OPT. You can record your tuition costs. You can work in a good company and get good exposure. And even after three years, let's say your edge fund doesn't get picked up. You can always go back to your home country with some good savings and good experience, of course. And what I've seen happening with most of the people that they, in that three year OPT time period, they get H1 visa, you know, because there is so much demand for H1 visa. What happens is they have, I think of sixth quota, but they get like twice as many application as the actual quota number.

So then they will do a lottery. So it's possible your company applies for your restaurant. It doesn't get picked up in a lottery, but then you get three ties and majority of the people get success in getting the H1B. So after you get H1B, you can just stay as long. I stayed in U.S. on a H1B for good 14 years.

So on most likely, just last month I got my green card. I came here in 2007. Yeah. Big achive, man. So after 14 years, I got my green card, but during this time period, I wasn't on H1B, every three years they renew your H1.. So it was okay. So if you want to do job and get good experience working in U.S. company, you know, like live a quality life here, of course, infrastructure wise, and the older system in U.S. is much better than many other countries.

So you can get benefit of all those things when you stay here. But if you have any dream in entrepreneurship, H1B, you know, that visa doesn't allow you to do something off your own. So you are tied to your employer, you how to work as an employee of that company, and you cannot start your own business.

Basically. So if a person has any entrepreneurship dreams, U.S. is probably not a good country, you know, you, you probably go to Canada or many European countries who have more liberal immigration laws. If you have, I would suggest first to explore in your own country, for example, I'm from India, India is booming.

So many startups, you know, like we had, I think, modern 20 unicorns recently in India, the companies who had more than 1 billion valuations, you know, those startups. So Indian startup ecosystem is improving very fast. So, yeah. So the summary is if you have an entrepreneurship dream if you come to us, you are going to crush all your, all those dreams and you will be kind of stuck doing a job and getting green card takes so much time that by the time you have a green card, you know, you have, you are so much liabilities.

You're probably in your 40s. You're not starting something at 40s is kind of difficult. People say that, Oh, we'll earn money for five years. Then we'll go back. And this is a common argument that you, at least from my friend circle, I get that, okay, we'll go to U.S., fires on money, go back to our country.

But that never happens. 99% of the people. They love the lifestyle here so much that they don't want to move back. And if they don't, if they want to move back, their wives want to allow them to move back because they like the freedom that they get here. So, yeah, that's the summary. Any, if you have any entrepreneurship dreams, U.S., H1B it will, you know, it will be very, very negative situation to be in your whole drive.

Your energy will dry up as you spent 13, 14, 15 years waiting for your green card.

[00:23:24] Ken: Yeah, I think that, you know, that's something new. Unfortunately, I was, I learned early on is that if I'm not following sort of my more entrepreneurial things that I wasn't quite as happy as I could have been, and I can't imagine the frustration.

That, you know, you even felt when you're, there are things that you want to pursue that you're unable to because your lifestyle sort of hinges upon it on a more positive note. I'd love to focus on some of those entrepreneurial ventures, namely your YouTube channel. That, that to me is something, you know, after you've gotten your green card and you've been able to start monetizing and you've been able to create this into a business rather than it being just a hobby and, you know, incredibly successful hobby I might add.

But I'd love to hear that story and how you first got into creating content. And, you know, you've helped hundreds of thousands of people around the world with the content and the value and the education you've produced. What was the onus for that? What was the story behind that?

[00:24:27] Dhaval: Back in 2011, I was diagnosed with this uncurable autoimmune disease called ulcerative colitis.

And the way that this is works is your immune system mistakenly attacks your colon, thinking that it is an outside agent kind of complication that you get into when you have an organ transplant situation. So my immune system, some switched, triggered in my body. I don't know why doctors don't know.

I have consulted 10 different doctors. No one knows. And because of that, my Golan starts getting ulcers. So if you look at the colonial scope, big picture of my colon, it's just full of also, I get a lot of bleeding. I lose a lot of weight. I get nutrition deficient as my colon is not able to absorb nutrition properly from the food.

And you know, your travel is restricted. You are having this constant bloody diarrhea. You know, you have to go to bathroom like 10, 15 times a day. You Uganda travel. You're pretty much restricted in your home. It's just a very, very like horrible health condition. I never heard of that before, but I started, started getting blurred.

I did my colonoscopy. That's when doctor told me, I didn't know, even what is that thing? Ulcerative colitis. Then I Google it. And I realized that the life has thrown at me. And now I have to deal with it because there is no cure for it. You know? So the only thing that doctor suggested was taking steroids, which will suppress your immune system and you feel a little better.

It doesn't GRD or your situation, basically. As long as you take steroids, you get some relief from the symptoms. But then taking steroids comes with a huge cost. The streriod that I was taking, it's called prednisone. They say it's like the most dangerous drug ever invented by human guidance. So that drug has lot of side effects.

And I was taking that in a heavy dose, like 40 milligram. And I remember there was a time that I was taking on 50 milligrams a day. So it will make your bones fragile. I have a friend who, who took this for a few days and he was sitting in his chair and he got a fracture in his hip and he had to go through a hip replacement surgery.

I mean, that drug is that bad. So I knew that. My health is going downhill. My future look pretty gloomy, because I was a young guy, like 29 year age. Now I have to go through this mess. I lived a very clean lifestyle. I was very controlled. I ate home, made food. My stress was under control. I was exercising.

Everything was good. My family genetics is awesome, but still, I mean, you know, I kept on thinking why this happened to me and I couldn't get this answer. You know? So eight years from 2011 to 2011 to 2016, I suffered a lot. I lost so much weight. And, you know, then I was looking at the future that I was going to have with this disease.

It looked pretty gloomy. My doctor said that eventually you will have to either surgically remove the colon, or you might get a colon cancer cause this constant inflammation is not a good thing. So I was looking at this dark gloomy future. And one day I was driving to work and I was listening to Pat Flynn's famous spark smart, passive income podcast.

And one statement that he told me, just struck a chord with me, which is, it doesn't matter what happens to you, but what matters is really how you react to that event. So this horrible situation has conditioned happened to me. I mean, I couldn't control it, but the thing that I can control is my reaction towards it.

So rather than sitting on my computer, just Googling about this disease and getting depressed, I decided that I want to spend part of my time in doing some activity where I'm selflessly giving back to the society, because they say that when you selflessly giving back to the back to anyone it kind of gives you the sense of purpose and having that sense of purpose directly or indirectly.

It helps in your health, both like physical, as well as your mental, mental health. For me, the most important thing was my mental health. My physical health was screwed up anyway, but then my mental health was something I could, I could control it. But then I have this nine to six job. I cannot travel. How do I help people?

Well, I have learned programming I'm I will. I'm good at programming. And I have learned so many things. Maybe I can share those things with the world. Now, one option is you go to public libraries, start teaching, you know, bunch of people who wants to learn coding, but my travel was restricted. I couldn't go out of my home.

So YouTube as a platform started growing exponentially back in those days. And I thought, what if I start putting some Python coding videos on YouTube that anyone from any part of the world can watch it. So in 2015, November, I remember I was another, yet another gloomy day, you know, I was bleeding heavily and feeling just too much.

I started my channel. I said that, okay, enough is enough. You know, you get this moment where your frustrations are at the peak and you just want to do something to get out of it. And I decided that I want to generalize this negative energy that is generated from the sheer amount of frustration in some positive way.

So I started my channel. I started teaching Python and initial almost one year, I just started putting videos and I started teaching. I was teaching mainly Python. I did not have any expectation in return. I knew nothing about YouTube monetization. I didn't get about how many subscribers I get.

Cause mine mention what it was not for others. It was to help myself so that if I spent. You know, teaching on YouTube, at least for those two hours, I'm not thinking about my disease. Otherwise, if you free, you're just constantly thinking about the disease and, you know, and when you have an incredible health condition, like going to Google is the worst thing to do.

So I just, yeah, I needed a reason not to go to Google. And I remember first in first one year I got some, something like 600 subscribers and I would get a comment here and there and I would feel good about it, you know, in a week, maybe I'll get two comments that people say thanks that you, you taught this thing in a nice way.

And I felt really good actually. I felt very better than what I thought I would feel when I started interacting with people through this virtual medium called YouTube. And then. Then I noticed some positive shift in my mindset that on weekends, you know, when I wake up and I have a lot of free time, I would always have an agenda.

I would have something to look forward to. I'll be like, Okay, I will teach decorators in Python. Oh, maybe I learned about generators, which is a very difficult concept. You know, if you want to explain this to a new person, but I know it very well. And I thought I could explain this thing very well. And I forgot to mention this one thing, which is when I started my channel is a reason why I picked a YouTube in teaching.

So I had passion in a lot of things. Like I was doing photography as well. I was good in poetry and writing general. Like I used to write short, smart, small, like English stories and poems and things like. So when I was at the peak of my frustration, I said that I want to, I want to write down clear things, which I lo and I enjoy doing it.

And I'm good at those things. And the third thing is you can not kind of the definition of icky guy where the thing, which you are good at it, you can make money out of it. I didn't think about money for me. My money was, you know, the, the positive outcome that I can get in my health. So that was my return.

And third thing was selflessly helping people. And when I knocked it down, all these three things what I realized is teaching was something I was good at it because in my past jobs, and even in my college days, I had received two compliments. It was not like a major appreciation, but I had received few compliments that you explained things really well.

So I had not done all those points. I did like prospect and myself in my last 10 or 20 years journey. And based on that retrospective the options I figured out was photography creative writing and teaching and teaching game at the top, it kind of aligned with all those three factors. And then I chose YouTube because of course I couldn't go out.

My situation was such that I had to do something which was very best suit. I can do it from the comfort of my home. Yeah. So that's how the first year was spent. And then in the second year, my subscribers started growing and my video views started going up and it grew my interest even more stronger. And I started putting more and more content.

I started interacting with people. Sometimes I would randomly send a message to a person who is commenting on my YouTube video saying that I want to talk with you. And I would talk with a random person in less than Nigeria or Pakistan or Australia. And I felt like, wow, this is amazing. I'm having a reason to talk to someone whom I don't know who is sitting in the other part of the world with a different culture, different background.

And that feeling of connecting with people across the globe was so much satisfying. And then as a popularity of my videos kept on growing. I, you know, I used YouTube comments as kind of like a crowdsourcing platform. There is this humongous crowd who is constantly giving you a feedback. So I would read each and every comment and I would take all the feedback in a very positive, constructive way.

I will literally not down those points and I would try to improve myself. One of the things I improved was my English communication, the way I pronounced things. My communication, of course, I'm not a native English speaker, so it is not perfect today. But previously I would use a lot of filler words like um.

And then doing YouTube video, allow me to improve that verbal communication aspect. So I would listen to my own video and I would be like, wow, I'm using this spillover so many times. You know, I would literally not done that in one minute time period. I used so, and like for example, seven times, and next time when I do the recording, I would consistently focus on that aspect and I will try to make my communication more compact.

So the result that I got out of this exercise was my performance at my job also improved because you know, a job like at my job at Bloomberg, I would do some presentation and my presentation style, the way I speak all of that improved. And I started getting more compliment at job as well. So now you are going through this cascading impact of.

You know, receiving positive results from all the fronts, from YouTube, from job, my mental health, everything started just improving day by day and last year, I think 2020, yeah, 2020 April. I hit a hundred thousand subscribers mark, and I just see this nice silver button from YouTube. And that felt like, wow, this is amazing.

100,000 people, well, what I need to listen to me, you know, I mean that, that, to me was an achievement. And during last one year, the channel has just exponentially been growing. It says it will probably in a month, it will now reach half a million subscribers. So the journey hasn't been then, then have a million the golden one.

Yes. So that, you know, in the entrepreneurship world, they say this hockey coach sign kind of experiencing that hockey coach right now. And yeah, one good thing that happened on my health front is in 2019, I came across some health protocol where you eat a raw vegan diet, pretty much fruits for a few months.

And I tried that along with homeopathy and miraculously, I recovered from my health condition as well. So it has been more than two and half years that I am free of all the medications I used to take this nasty medicines every single day for 8, 9 years. Now, here I am that two and half years, I have not taken a single pill.

I'm doing amazing in terms of my health. And I think all of these things are kind of connected. You know, my me doing YouTube and me, my sense of purpose, getting more and more stronger, kind of helped me in some aspect of my mindset in such a way that switch that was triggered somehow, that effect is almost kind of getting rewards.

And, you know, I'm getting into the state of perfect health where I'm, I'm almost forgetting, you know, what colitis is. I'm like totally a hundred percent free of all the symptoms not taking any medication. My career is on the rise. I got my green card as well. Wellness news. So I would think is so good now.

[00:40:30] Ken: This episode of Ken's Nearest Neighbors is brought to you by Z by HP. HP's high compute, workstation-grade line of products and solutions. Z is specifically made for high performance data science solutions. And I personally use the ZBook Studio and the Z4 Workstation. I really love that the Z line who comes standard with Linux and they also can be configured with the data science software stack. With the software stack, you can get right into the work of doing data science on day 1 without the overhead of having to completely reconfigure your new machine. Now, back to our show.

I love that so much, and you know, I think that there's something that underlies your entire story that I don't know if I would say it's like the key to life, but it's something that I've recognized in a lot of people who have created outcomes that are very desirable or created a dramatic change in their life. And that's creating positive feedback loops, right? So everything that you're doing, it plays on itself and it creates more positive outcomes. And that started by taking a negative thing and channeling it, right?

So you, you had this debilitating illness and you were able to take all of that energy, that negative energy, that, that was accumulating from that and channel it into something positive, like creating value for other people, creating a purpose and creating those types of things. And that kicked off this entire cascade of, Okay, you're, you're creating value for other people.

Other people are appreciating that that's giving you better feelings about yourself and about your situation and all these other things. That's creating more opportunities for you with work. That's great. You know, like all of these things are, are intermixed in this like kind of positive sauce that keeps her holding forward.

Right. And to me that that's like that is transformational in anyone's life. If they can figure out how to get the ball rolling. I think it's like the flywheel effect. A lot of people call it as well because things just feeling sort of effortless once you get momentum you know, something that I remember, it's obviously not serious in the sense that your health was, but I remember when I was in college, right.

And I was playing golf at a very high level. And I was, I was also like a pretty good student and whenever I would play a bad round of golf, right. I'd get so frustrated. But then I would just start studying because I was like, you know, I suck at golf. That's not going to work out. I better hit the books or whatever it might be.

Right. And then if I ever had any bad academic performance, I would go start practicing my golf. And like, those things fed off each other, right? Like we were able to create motivation or excitement or something and like positive outcomes out of really negative thing. And to me, that's what like balance in life is right.

If something is not going well in one area of your life, you have these other things that you can rely on there. There's other places where you can focus that energy, that to create more positive outcomes. And I just think your story is so inspirational and it's so incredible that like, you know, you were able to come over, you know, overcome things that through the power of your own mind and your decisions and like creating value for others that you know, doctors suggested you probably wouldn't be able to overcome in that sense.

Right? Like you're able to find these ways. You're able to like, get something that works for yourself. And to build this up over time. And obviously like none of this happened overnight. Right.

[00:44:07] Dhaval: But it took a lot of work and a lot of afford, but the thing is it the kind of result that. I have received as part of that afford was it's amazing.

It feels like a blessing. You know, as if I have won a million dollar lottery, when I was watching this movie, the Princess Switch, they had this this dialogue, that life is what happens when you're busy, planning other things. I never planned YouTube. I never thought I would be teacher. I never ever thought I would be a teacher. Right now, I consider myself more of a teacher, than a software engineer. I just absolutely love teaching. All of these things would not have happened if colitis did not come to my life because my career at Bloomberg was going so good. I was owning good money. I had everything I had no need of getting involved into the side gig and I come from a family where none of my parents, uncles, brothers, no one is an entrepreneur. My brother, he started a company later on, but it's like me and my brother, we both had no connection of any kind of intrepreneurship thing. Mind die, family, everyone believed I could just do a job, you know, work your for your whole life, nine to six job retire with some 401k money and just live a stable, balanced life.

So all of these things would not have happened if this is come to my life. So if I look into my past and if I think about all these things in a retrospective, I feel lucky that I got this disease. And after I got, this is so many amazing things happen. Of course it was a bumpy ride, but it was well worth it.

If this didn't happen, I would be doing pretty good in my career. You know, I would be just being my regular nine to six job and this side of thing, which I built up that would have never happened. And when I was going through this horrible moments of suffering, I mean, of course I was into book reading and all of that.

So I heard about all these things that, okay, you channelize your negative energy into positive or something good happens. But at a deeper level, yeah. At a deeper level, I'm telling you, whoever is listening right now. And if you are going through any negative experiences of frustration in your life, and anyone, if you know this principle that one can channelize negative energy into something positive, still at a deeper level, you have this doubt that this is just a motivational bullshit.

You know, this, this works for just few lucky people. But I'm a living example. Here I am. I'm an average person that these principles are like law of gravity. They work hundred percent. So if you had going through any frustration in your life today, I'm telling you, you are probably lucky one, and you have this chance to channelize that frustration, energy into something positive.

You have the chance now, how you make good use of that chance is up to you. I'm not saying people who are going to negative emotion, they will end up being good. You know, they will end up having a very dark future as well. But the good news is you have this dance, which is not offered to a regular person who is not going to struggle.

So imagine you are in good health. You have stable job. You have lately how this motivation to do something extra in your life. So then you are in this pool of unlucky people. And if you want to get out of that pool, it either requires a lot of like self-motivation, you know, which has to come from within, or you go through this horrible experiences in your life where you don't have any option, but you have to do something to get out of this mess.

So, yes, if I talk to someone who is going through a lot of negative experiences, the first thing I tell them is you are one of the lucky ones that you are in the situation. Now you have this opportunity to do something good and channelize your negative energy into something very positive, creative. So it is up to you.

If you want to take an advantage of this opportunity that is being offered and we live in a world. Where the world is becoming more flat. Look at this Metaverse thing that is coming up, it's going to make the volume more flatter. So it doesn't matter if you're living in a remote town of Egypt or you are living in San Francisco, you know, in a family which is very well to do.

Now, both of these people have equal opportunities. Internet is offering you these equal opportunities. So if you are living in today's time, you have a lot of opportunity. You have lot of ways to build something, either a startup or side gig, or even advance a career or creativity. Anything you have so much opportunities and all the resources are there.

For example, we can be both teach data science back in those days. If you want to learn data science, the university, very few resources. You have to go to a university. Be a lot of fees nowadays, you can learn it for free. So if you are determined, I'm telling you, you don't need any degree. Internet has all the resources available.

You can become a data scientist working in Google or Facebook, just based on free resources. I'm not telling, not talking about those e-learning paid courses, free resources. You can do it. So you are offered so much, you know, you have this advantage of most that if you're not making good use of this one days, it's kind of a shame on you.

Almost. I say that too. Like I have, I have few young kids that I deal with, like my, in my community and in my families. And when I see these girls getting distracted on like Snapchat and video games and I feel so bad when I was in like you, I didn't have these many opportunities and here you are, you all have so much opportunity.

You are just making, you're just wasting like these opportunities, which are offered to you.

[00:51:02] Ken: Yeah. I mean, I think that there's something so powerful that like it's all out there, right? I mean, the internet is this vast place where you can learn all of this information and absolutely like the deck is stacked against some people in some ways with opportunities, whatever it might be.

But that just means that what you have to calm, it makes the journey so much more meaningful. And, you know, admittedly, like, I don't think I've by any means had a difficult life. Right. I've come from a, I've been very fortunate from the family that I've come from, like very fortunate with my health and these types of things.

But on the other side of that, all of the adversity that I feel that I faced has. I mean, there's things that have been very difficult, but all of the things that negatively impacted my life were what created the most positive change over the longterm. What shaped my belief system? What made me, who I am.

We really don't know. I don't know who we are until we're tested. Right. We don't know what true happiness is until you've had true despair or loss or any of these things. I mean, you know, I've told this story a couple of times, but you know, one of the most meaningful things to me is that I lost my cousin who was like the same age as me, like my best friend in the world when I was 21 years old.

Right. And you know, how do you, how do you deal with. Losing someone who you talk to every day and then those types of things. And at the time, you know, I was in college, I was fooling around a lot. My grades weren't very good. I wasn't, I didn't have any purpose. Right? Like there was no meaning. I just wanted to play golf and hang out and, and, you know, go to parties and do whatever.

And you know, that, that loss while I would never trade my cousin for anything at the same time I got this immense like appreciation for life. Right. Is that if I'm here and he's not right, there's so many of opportunities that, that what he could have done, what he could have achieved, like I'm completely squandered my life, if I'm not making it meaningful, right. If I'm not creating value, if I'm not like at least like trying and stuff, you know, I was just coasting by and like, what could I achieve ,if I really like put my best effort into it? You know, if I didn't take these things for granted and you know, like legitimately over the course of two weeks, like this happened and I got a whole new lease, like overnight, my grades changed overnight, like who I was as a person, completely transformed.

And I'm still like that. I mean, granted, you know, like I waste time here and there. Like I know when it's perfect. I'm not like, you know, everyone has their, their idiosyncrasies, but like, there is so much that I took out of that experience. I mean, it is the single thing that has made me who I am today in a lot of ways.

And, there's nothing I can do is I, you know, I can't change the past. All it can be as grateful for that experience. And all I can do is say, Hey, like I felt really the lows now from that, I've been able to feel such incredible highs, whether it's creating communities where, whether it's like chasing after my dreams, whether it's like after that, I had always wanted to play more golf in college.

Right. I was at a school. You know, I didn't get along with the coach. I was doing whatever that happened. And like next semester I transferred out and I was on a team and I was playing and I was doing what I should have been doing. Right. Like, why was I waiting? Why was I like waiting for something to happen?

Why didn't I just do it and take action on it. And I think that when you have these experiences, you realize that like their scarcity of time, their scarcity of resources, their scarcity of life, right?

[00:54:55] Dhaval: Yeah, I think you said this very beautiful again, I'm really sorry for your loss, but the very fact that you are alive is a big deal.

People take, you know, so many things for granted 2019, I was at a stage where my steroids stopped working and doctors were thinking of putting me in this next set of drugs, which is called six MPV to light form of chemotherapy. And at some point I started thinking I'm probably not going to be alive for next five years, you know?

And then you get this tremendous appreciation of time, every breed that. Your perception of time, just genius. It's like, you know, we always inherently assume, let's say you are 20 year old. You're like, oh yeah, 80, 90 dude. Wake up. What kind of dream you're living in? You, you may never know. You might die at 30.

You might die at 25, you never know every single moment that you're alive. You can breathe. This is so much valuable. And I can tell the same thing about eating. For example, when I was on my raw diet, I would just eat fruits for three months. I ate only fruits and in dinner. Yeah, some maybe sweet potato. And if someone offers me a rice plate of plain rice, that would be like, you know, having a dinner in like Michelin three-star restaurant.

Like that's the feeling I'm not exaggerating. I remember after three months of the strict diet, my wife made a rice as simple. It's called a kitchen in, in, in Indian diet, like a rice and some blenders she made. And I ate that and I felt like, wow, look at this feeling. And now every day, even when I'm eating that food, you know, if I'm eating rice or some of the regular homemade food that I could eat now that I'm healthy.

I feel so happy. You know, sometimes I'm smiling and laughing and the people that aren't willing is has this guy gone crazy, but they don't know how that kind of appreciation, which I have that look, I can eat rice seeds. Isn't it like a big, like a big deal for me. Eating rice, not seeing blood, you know, I go to bathroom and if I don't see blood, I mean, I come out of bathroom Victoria, so I'm like one more day.

[00:57:31] Ken: Well, you know, I don't, I don't talk about this very much because the one time I did, I got absolutely roasted on Twitter. But every year from January 1st, the new year to my birthday, I do a water fast. Right. And you know, like all around the world, fasting is very common and it's it's just a way to start a Monday, January 4th. Sorry.

[00:57:55] Dhaval: Oh, wow. That is cool. Yeah.

[00:57:57] Ken: And you know, like again, like anyone who would consider something like that, like check with your doctors like this isn't for everyone, there's a lot of health risks and whatever it is, but you know, you don't, you get this appreciation for food, right?

You get this appreciation for you know, life in a sense when you're starving all the time, right? When you, when you take something away that you're so commonly associated with and, you know, like looking at research, I think that there's reasonable health benefits associated with that. But for me, there's just like such this, this beauty and this mental challenge of like, facing like the absence of things, there's this, this beauty and depriving yourself of something.

So in the future, you can, like, you can have those things again. And you're so much more grateful for all of them. And like, for me, food is one of my favorite things in the world. Like you ask anyone, like, I like sports. I like data science and I like food. And like, like, those are those, like the three things that are obviously my family was up to things are very important, but like to me that if you can deprive yourself of those things a little bit, you get so much more of an appreciation for them when you come back. I mean, for me, like I, you know, I'm a big time, like you know, I enjoy a nice steak every now and then. And I remember like the first bite of steak that I take after not eating for a couple of days or any food, really like, even just the smells are so much more intense.

Like the amount that I feel like I live is just so much more intense about everything. Right. And I think people get. I can get that in any area of their life. I mean, it's not, you don't have to deprive yourself like data science, right. But, but on the flip side, if we're, if we're looking to learn a new skill or we're looking at some, at some of these other things, like we should be so immensely grateful that that like resources are available, that you can learn these things, that there is a domain, this field that we're also interested in and there's opportunities.

And, you know, rather than looking and saying, Hey, this, this market is saturating it's from hookup. People are still getting jobs. Like I'm grateful that there are still opportunities. I'm grateful that the domain is growing, you know, 20, 50% year over year. I'm grateful that like, holy cow, like if I really apply myself and I beat other people out for this position, I've really proven myself in this career.

I've really made something of myself I've been able to accomplish this thing. What can I build on? And, you know, building those little things into your life again and not wrecking recommending that anyone does a fast, like I do, but doing these things, these many accomplishments you know, to say you did it, or, or to do things that were outside of what you thought were possible before, that's how you create, or you start to create these positive feedback, feedback loops that we described.

As you have these little wins and these little wins become big wins and they just continue to grow and escalate and, and then you're, you're smiling and healthy and you have a successful YouTube channel and just like yourself. So...

[01:01:07] Dhaval: Yeah. Yeah. And water fasting. I also tried water fasting like two days, three days before, and four does fasting seem to help help a lot of people with autoimmune condition, by the way, again, not an otherwise that any doctor would give, but based on empirical evidence, you'll find many resources, many people doing water fasting, getting amazing results, especially on chronic conditions.

So the benefit that you mentioned are obviously some like extra benefits, but if you have health condition just by doing that you can get a lot of, you can definitely see a positive outcome and I'm really glad can that you have this kind of routine, especially what an amazing or a beautiful way to celebrate your birthday, man.

I'm really, I have a lot of respect for you.

[01:02:00] Ken: My birthday is characterized by gluttony. Cause that's what I end the fast, but everything leading up to the birth.

[01:02:08] Dhaval: Birthdays as amazing. And then you start your birthday with this feeling of appreciation. You know, food is a very basic thing of our survival and you start your birthday with that immense amount of appreciation for the food.

[01:02:24] Ken: Absolutely. Also talking about things that, you know, I think we're both appreciative of. I'd love to sort of drill in just a little bit more into the idea of like this sort of democracy that democratized education through YouTube. That's something to me that we both have obviously found tremendous value and this free education ecosystem that we've alluded to before.

How do you think education is, is changing as we continue to progress? Like what does, what does education look like in 10 years? Are we going to be going to university still, or is everyone just going to be learning on YouTube or through these other things?

[01:03:02] Dhaval: I think universities will still exist, but it will become more like a hybrid model.

You know, like the whole work from home versus going to office. I think that new thing will, that thing will stay for a long time where you will have a hybrid model. Going to universities, of course, has benefits where there is an in-person intercation, you participate in, let's say a sports activity or any extracurricular activities.

You make a lot of good friends. So all the soft skills of, course, going to university is better, that in-person interaction. That whole experience adds a lot of value. But on the other hand learning online through YouTube or any e-learning platform is going to become the mainstream medium of education.

And right now it's still like, Okay, you how to go to university, get a degree. And then you study this machine learning or bite on onsite through YouTube or some courses on Udemy, but in the next few years, and it's not very far where this will become the mainstream, where there's a person who has a degree and gets a job.

And there's another person who doesn't have any degree. They learned everything online and they still get equal or better job. And we see this happening in Google, for example, they announced they don't require... data analytics course, plus there are, I'm talking about the hiring program. They don't officially require any degree, so you can go into Google without any degree.

And there are many companies who would hire you. I interviewed one person on my YouTube channel, actually not one person that I'm many people who are having on my channel, who do not have any data science degree. They either have totally irrelevant degree or they don't have any degree. And they are working as a data scientist in some good fonts.

There's one guy who's a mechanical engineer. He, during his 30 days, every day, he would participate on Kaggle. He builds up a good rank on Kaggle and after finishing his mechanical engineering, he directly got a job as a data science. So his degree was not considered, of course, that he got a job because of his schedule performance.

So when, if he didn't have mechanical engineering degree, it would have been seen. So we are already entering into that world where self-motivated individuals learn necessary skills through you to e-learning platforms, by participating on Discord Kaggle, Stack Overflow, participating in tech conferences, open source, you know, this and direct cost system is kind of replacing that university degree.

And university education is so costly. You spend, you spend like four years, you spend less than four years, computer science on average, how much is the cost in U.S. around.

[01:06:09] Ken: Probably let's say $20,000, $30,000 minimum.

[01:06:12] Dhaval: 20, 30,000 by trade. So if you spend three or four years of spending, you're spending more than a hundred thousand.

And on the other hand, you see people who, after that 12th grade just spend like one year or one and a half year in the self learning part, and they get a job after one or two years. So not only this saved money, they start owning much earlier and they start gaining the real life industry experience much earlier.

I have a Discord channel more than 8,000 people. And I have few of my mentors who are, who are kids, actually, there's one guy who is, we just finished his 12th grade and the way he talks, the way he helped people solve by them problems. I mean, I would hire him, you know, in my team. Is that capable. We don't need his degree so that the good news is for anyone listening is we are entering into very non-conventional world, where all you need is this hunger.

You know, you need to have this hunger and then whatever resources, training material that you need, it is out there and it is available for free. You don't have to spend any money. It's just a person needs to have that trial. And once you held the trial, you can go work as a data scientist in Google, Facebook, you don't need a degree.

[01:07:47] Ken: Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting after I taught a university course, that's when I realized the true value of online education. And I want to just clarify, I think the average cost of a university degree is like it's around $30,000 a year, minimum. I mean, not a year like total. So maybe like, you know, five to 10 a year at the state school can be up to, you know, 20, 30, a year at some other private universities that are out there.

But something that I've experienced in college is you have good professors and bad professors. There are some professors that are there to do their research and they don't really care about teaching you. And there are some that really care and it's really meaningful. If I let's say hypothetically create an online course, right.

Everyone is getting the same experience from that course. I've created a lesson in a way that is standardized and that is conveying the exact information that I want. It can be updated in real time. There's a lot of benefits to it. If you're a student going to a university setting, it really depends on the teacher you get.

Right. Within the same year university, two different teachers are teaching the course and one could be really great and one can be completely useless, right? Yes. And, and to me, there's, there's like beauty and scale. There's reduced costs because you're, you're, everyone is getting the same experience and there's ways that you can have the personalized touch.

I mean is something that I absolutely use more than anyone I know is office hours. Right. And how many, do you know how many kids use office hours? Very few. I'd say 10% of classes. Now, the kids in our classes even consider coming to office hours. Right. So if you're like, you know, there's such a better system out there that encourages, or, or almost guarantees a standardized education like that is good and they can be polished and improved.

That is asynchronous. And you know, I'm just looking forward to when more universities leverage this or when it becomes, or when no university suffragists, this becomes this like more democratic or equal access to education type of thing. Because in my mind, the writing's on the wall. I see what's on YouTube.

I've seen courses that are free on YouTube that are significantly better than most university courses that I've taken. Right. I would hope that like, you know, and, and I've seen most of the courses that are paid, like they're also better than university courses, right? They have the advantages that universities don't have to is that they're professionals at making courses, professors are not professionals at teaching they're professionals at research for most of the point of the time.

Right. And there's just this weird disconnect.

[01:10:42] Dhaval: The best thing about online courses is that you have this review system. So let's say if I find a course on Udemy 300,000 reviews, you know, 300 on like 96% is like five star review. That course has to be good. The whole crowd is validating. It's like buying product on Amazon with thousands of reviews, real quick, Walmart, Walmart, and just picking up things at random.

You never know how things are going to look like. So that is this feedback. Then there is, as you mentioned, there is this personality style, right? So let's say you go to YouTube, you look for data science educators. You find many then based on the personality, you know, some educators might sync up velvet to cause there are some people who are visual learners.

There are some people who want to go more in depth. Let's if you want to become a research data scientist, you want to go more in depth in math and things like that. If you come to my channel, for example, my channel is more for beginners that I teach in a visual way, storytelling, not too much detail into math and things like that.

So now you can pick the teacher that you like. It's almost like a matchmaking. You know, you are kind of doing a matchmaking with the kind of teacher that you want to learn from. And the other thing is you have control. Let's say I'm, you know, you're watching my Korean decent video, your five minute into the grade in decent video, and you don't understand a few basic concepts of delegators.

Now you can pause. You can pause. Go to this another amazing channel called three blue one brown. The guy teaches math in an amazing way. You can clear your concept on that way, do come back and continue. And now you have a very effective learning. If you are in a class, you how to attend that class for one hour.

Now you don't have fundamentals, which is clear. So after first five or 10 minutes, the rest of the things are going to bounce from your head because you don't, you have not satisfied pretty quick. And the teacher is not going to stop you because out of 30 students, now you are one of the students who do not know daily with this, but with online learning, this kind of customization is possible.

And this is already when I do, like when I'm learning new things, I learn things online. When I hear any jargons on a prerequisite, I would just stop that video right there, go to other resources, learn the things, you know, clear those prerequisites, come back. It's very effectively. And then when I compared this with a traditional university model, like I see like so much waste, you know, in terms of, in terms of you have, should do, let's say, for example, I don't after lunch, I don't like want to learn anything. I feel sleepy. And now you're here, you're in university. You're feeling sleepy. And your teacher is teaching you a most difficult concept in math. Whereas with online learning, you can just learn things at your own convenience when you're fresh, when you feel like learning those things.

So definitely online learning I would say is I wouldn't be surprised when if online learning kind of overtakes the university learning. Maybe right now, online learning is secondary. You used to be learning like primary, but I think in the future, maybe online learning or self-learning will become primary and university will just kind of become secondary.

So bad news for all the universities and all the, all those businesses.

[01:14:29] Ken: Yeah. It's, funny. The exact points you brought up because those are really relevant during my master's in computer science. So I started off attending everything in class. I would go to the lectures, do all this stuff. And for grad students, the lectures are like 5:30 PM to 9:00 PM.

One day a week. I'm a morning person, night classes are not a good idea. And I eventually started taking all of my classes online, and then I could watch the recording the next morning. I could watch it in two X speed through the stuff that I understood and slow it down and rewind it and like, watch it over and over again for the stuff that I didn't, I could access these other resources in real time.

There was like, it was so continuous. Like you don't have to disrupt the lecture, you don't have to do these things. I am making my education perfectly customized to myself and my abilities and the things that I struggle with. Right. I'd say like 80% of the stuff I understand better than most students who are ready.

And then 10% of stuff, I probably understand the same, like same speed and then 10% of stuff I'm like way behind. Right. And so if I can match my learning, and the education that I'm using, if I can customize it for myself, for my exact problems, that's what, that's what perfect education is. Right. It's like meeting our needs or challenging us in the right ways.

And I really think that traditional education struggles to do that at scale, right. Maybe it meets like a small portion of, of the people, right? So there's a famous story that I heard about. And it's about a lot of airplanes crashing. I think it was in world war one or world. I think it was world war one.

Right. And what they realized is that for the pilots, all of the seats were designed for the average pilot who was maybe five foot, nine X amount of pounds and all these things. And they're like, oh, that'll fit a lot of people. Right? The problem is that the number of people who are precisely at the average height and weight is very small.

Right. It is the highest bar of like the histogram that we draw, but it's only one bar, you know what I mean? So you're looking at maybe like 2% of the population in a normal distribution based on how all our terrain. So we're designing, you know, all of education to meet 2% of people effectively, or there's very small percentage of people.

When, if we made it more flexible, everyone would be getting so much more benefit out of it. And, and again, like, you know, not to beat a dead horse, but I absolutely think that that is what online education really serves to do. And then anything that I create, it's what I hope to achieve going down the road is like, how do I make this useful to as many people as possible difficult task, but I think one of the most meaningful and practical ones that's out there.

[01:17:25] Dhaval: Yep. Totally agree.

[01:17:27] Ken: Awesome. All of all, this was incredible. I've asked all the questions that I have on my end. If can you, can you share what's going on in your life? Some of the projects you're working on, what's next for codebasics and on how people can, can get in contact or find your content.

[01:17:44] Dhaval: Sure. So go to YouTube search for codebasics, single word.

You'll find my chain. Yeah, we'll link it. I created a lot of content on data science, AI Python, few videos on blockchain. So right now I'm working on building my first paid course. So would how, in fact, I would hope two paid courses coming out soon. One will be Python programming, but learning it and are very practical way where you look at a real life business use case in a healthcare industry, and you try to solve this medical data extraction problem using Python. So rather than just teaching your syntax, we look at the problem first, and then you see how we can use this tool called Python to fix that problem. So that will be my first course in that I'm building a second course, which is Power BI again, practical Power BI, where we look at a real life business use case.

And both of these courses will provide you an experience that you go through when you are, you start actually working in the industry, because this has been a major gap that in academics, you learn things in one way, but when you go to industry, you see this clear disconnect. You know, things happen totally differently.

And kind of skills that you learned during college. At least I felt. I I'm, I might be using only 5% of the skills, which I learned in my college days. So there's this huge disconnect. And I'm my mission is to bridge that disconnect so that when you're learning, you're getting this, you're getting a feel of almost as if you are working as a Python engineer or a data analyst or a data scientist in some real company.

You know, so that's my mission. I want to build courses around that experience. And I can build that because I myself have worked in the industry. The people who are helping me with those courses are the ones who have worked in, in the industry for so many years. And I would have so much feedback from YouTube or last four or five years from my viewers.

And I'm building this course based on, you know, the courses which can address that feedback. So that's something I'm doing on my paid courses. As far as my YouTube channel is concerned, I might start an NLP series. NLP and computer vision series, but otherwise I'm uploading regular videos on career guidance, on transition stories.

I am done with my machine learning and deep learning series. Although in my machine learning, I might add a couple of more video. I need to cover bagging, boosting, things like that. And yeah, and in my videos, I try to give theory and coding and I do exercise as well. So it's like the complete experience, you know?

So yeah, and I'm interviewing a lot of people, a lot of data scientists. And the people who have made career transitions. So career transitions has been a team of my website in the last few months, which is a video is coming out this weekend where I'm discussing, I'm having conversation with someone who was a physics major, and now he's a research data scientist, you know? So how do these people from different field transition into data science or transition into software engineering? So I just provide a guidance around those. So yeah, that's going to be my agent for next few months.

[01:21:23] Ken: Incredible stuff. So everyone be sure to check out the codebasics YouTube channel, it'll be tagged in the title as well as in the description.

And again, thank you so much for coming in. This is in my mind, just such a very, it's such a meaningful conversation and it gave me another sense of a perspective and a lot of motivation.

[01:21:42] Dhaval: Thank you very much for the kind words, Ken. It's always a pleasure talking with you.

[01:21:48] Ken: Always a pleasure as well.

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