Somewhere along the way...

Somewhere along the way I've become a computer coder. I can speak R, SQL, Stata, and probably some others that I can't think of right now. Tonight I spent the evening working on, among other things, this:

UPDATE distinct_id_and_partyids
SET true_1990 = 1
WHERE EXISTS(SELECT partyid_1990.newid FROM partyid_1990
WHERE distinct_id_and_partyids.newid=partyid_1990.newid AND (distinct_id_and_partyids.partyid=partyid_1990.party1_1990 OR distinct_id_and_partyids.partyid=partyid_1990.party2_1990 OR distinct_id_and_partyids.partyid=partyid_1990.party3_1990 OR distinct_id_and_partyids.partyid=partyid_1990.party4_1990));

and this:

library (RODBC)
channel <-odbcConnect("italymasterdb")
datavector_1989<- sqlQuery (channel, paste( "select true_1989", "from smallsample", "order by id, partyid" ))
close (channel)

How did it happen that someone as uninterested in computers as me has begun spending hours writing code and even longer waiting for it to run? Had I known that grad school would basically be lessons in learning how to use computer packages, I might not have signed up for it. However, my desire to get through has forced me to learn things I'd rather not have had to learn. I would guess that there are a lot of less-than-pleasant things in life that happen this way.

My only complaint right now is that it looks like all of these computer languages are not going to get me out of learning another real language. This fall I'm signed up for Italian 1. I'm tempted to \q ("quit") my enrollment in the class, but it will probably be good for me. È la vita, or whatever.