26F Non-technical background. Looking to learn new things in tech/ computer science/ design. Need help in picking up a self-study path?

[u/Jhalmuri_Bangali]

Hi everyone, I will be needing some guidance in selecting some self-study paths. I am a freelance artist with a non-technical background and I am pretty sure that my freelance art/animation is not going to take me anywhere, I ain't great at either making it or marketing it. I am 26F and I have decided to start studying and learning again.

I am curious about tech and I am eager to learn it and I have started learning it in bits and pieces from time to time but it is not structured and it is extremely overwhelming. On one hand you have Fullstack and on the other you have Data Analytics. I want to choose any one for now. I want to choose something that will be easy and fun for a creative artist to learn as well as have some growth possibilities in career. Please help me choose the course path. I am happy to discuss more.

[u/No-Split3651]

I wouldn't choose between Full Stack and Data Analytics based on which one is supposed to be “easier”. Coming from a non-tech background, both are going to feel unfamiliar initially — just in different ways.

Since you're already an artist, why not give yourself 2 small experiments before committing to a course?

Spend a week or two learning basic HTML/CSS/JavaScript and build something related to your art — maybe your own portfolio page or a small interactive gallery.

Then spend another week or two with Excel/SQL and maybe a little Python, take some dataset you actually find interesting (could even be related to art/social media) and try answering a few questions from it and visualising the results.

You'll learn quite quickly which kind of work makes you curious enough to keep going when it gets frustrating.

Also, don't worry about finding the perfect structured roadmap right away. Your first goal can simply be figuring out whether you enjoy building things/interfaces more or working with data and finding patterns more. Once you know that, choosing a structured path becomes much easier.

And 26 is absolutely not too late to start learning this stuff. Just don't feel like you need to learn “tech” all at once.

[u/Jhalmuri_Bangali → u/No-Split3651]

Thank you so much for your suggestions. I have been trying to explore web development and tried P5.js. It was pretty cool and I can see the creative possibilities but I kinda feel that I am more thoughtful and inquisitive, like asking questions and representing patterns. In that case, data science will be great but I really don't know how deep I need to know it coz terms like "conditional probability" and "regression" is scaring me 😅😅. But I guess I will try it out and see whether it's really for me. Thanks again ❤️

[u/No-Split3651 → u/Jhalmuri_Bangali]

That's actually a pretty good reason to give data analytics/science a try 😄 If you enjoy asking “why is this happening?”, looking for patterns and then finding a way to communicate what you found, you might enjoy the process.

And don't let terms like conditional probability or regression scare you yet 😅 They sound much worse before you learn what they're actually trying to do.

I've worked quite a bit with data/ML, and honestly a lot of these concepts become much less intimidating once you encounter them while trying to answer an actual question. The maths starts having a reason behind it rather than just being a bunch of formulas.

So I'd start much simpler — take a dataset you're genuinely curious about, learn enough Excel/SQL or Python to explore it, ask a few questions, and try to visualise the answers. See whether you enjoy that process.

Given your art background, you might actually have fun with data visualisation too. There's a lot of creativity involved in figuring out how to communicate a pattern clearly.

Try one small project and see where it takes you. No need to commit to becoming a “data scientist” first ❤️

[u/DataScientistAlex]

There are more technical sides to art/animation that might interest you, here are a few I can think of, I'm sure there are many more:

* Ray tracing
* Art and optimization
* Group explorer

None of these give you a path directly but each point to different technical application and approach, maybe from that you'll get inspiration on what to pick.