Python, Astronomy and Me



I wouldn't be where I am today if not for Astronomy and Astrophysics. I failed my Computer Science 101 course in my first year of college because I could not comprehend how the variables, conditionals and loops could ever help me with my Physics degree. I stayed as far away from programming as possible until the summer of my fourth year. I had an internship where I was tasked with processing astronomical data. The professor I was working with that summer told me that I could use any programming language I wanted to process the data and for reasons that I don't remember now, I chose Python. And I absolutely fell in love. Not with the programming language itself but with the fact that I now had access to a tool that helped me with Astronomy and Astrophysics.

I graduated and I got a job as a Scientific Software Developer, not too far away from Science but far enough that I don't get to work directly on anything even remotely related to Astronomy and Astrophysics. I've followed astropy from time to time and considered contributing to them but other things always got in the way.

The talk itself linked above lacks the depth that I was hoping for but it still triggered a bout of nostalgia.

It's highly unlikely but I still hope that one day I will have a full-time job where I write code for Astronomy and Astrophysics with reasonable pay. A few jobs open up at IUCAA and RRI from time to time but they don't pay anywhere close to what their western counterparts do.

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