Things I should Learn

I have been telling myself I should learn all sort of stuff since my college days. Shortly after I officially had all the time in this world (after I got my thesis done), I could not bring myself to do even one thing. The only thing I have managed to learn is just how to use emacs–watched the first three of his tutorial videos.

Below are things I have been wanting to learn with their corresponding learning sources I have come across (the listing order may mean something):

1. Computer Science/Programming

   I was lucky to have taken two introductory programming courses in 2012–the two were both part of the curriculum of Teknik Perminyakan¹ ITB and both used C as the language. Three and a half years went by, I took two online courses on Python programming from edX. Still don’t know how these computer stuff work, but I have read several articles (like this) mentioning that Python is built on top of C–which is then referred to as CPython. So I guess this is a good combination of basics and I just need to further the knowledge.

   For now I need to refresh my C basics and keep learning more tricks. tutorialspoint.com seems good. And trivial stuff on Quora like this occasionally helps.

2. Reservoir (Simulation?) Engineering

   I don’t know if I will keep doing reservoir engineering in my life. Who the hell are actually interested in modelling some fluid flow happening underground?–not me unfortunately. Was Henry Darcy actually obsessed with fluid flow to the point that he decided to come up with the mathematical model of it? I don’t think so. Darcy must have his ultimate motivation–or obsession, passion, whatever you want to call it–that kept him motivated throughout his life. I believe Darcy just happened to come across the fluid flow problem. It makes more sense that he might have been just some guy who loved problem-solving, experimentation, or researching.

   For now, I have at least identified this sub-field of reservoir engineering called reservoir simulation–it reeks computational stuff! This is the likeliest thing to keep me sane if I’m gonna stick to petroleum engineering–just please, not for trying to look cool again.

   In fact, just now I have discovered new materials on reservoir simulation on YouTube by John T. Foster. I will surely go through this later. I’m a millenial after all. Millenials love tutorial videos! Additionally, there are plenty of open source projects like MRST to learn. Internet is so great.

3. Mathematics/Calculus/Probability and Statistics

   All first-year engineering students at ITB are required to take some sort of Calculus 1 then 2 classes. Enter the second year (third semester), petroleum engineering students then went on taking Partial Differential Equations for Petroleum Engineering². I failed at the first attempt in taking PDE class. I didn’t pay much attention. Mathematically modelling fluid flow was some really alien stuff to me. I could not understand why the solution has some particular form either. My third attempt made me understand stuff–like Euler’s formula \(e^{ix} = \cos{x} + i\ \sin{x}\).

4. Economics/Finance/Trading/Quantitative Analysis

   I took an Energy Economics class on my very last semester. The grade did not come out well, but enough to motivate me to learn further. My sole learning source other than slides was Khan Academy–Microeconomics and Macroeconomics. Have not gone through the entire video lectures (but will sure go through it later).

   Since I like programming approach more, apparently there is this site called Quantopian. Again, this is what makes the internet so awesome. It apparently has lectures hosted on https://www.quantopian.com/lectures. It is mentioned that most finance professionals nowadays use Python. Thus, Quantopian uses Python as their preferred programming language. All the more reason to be grateful to have learned plenty of Python basics.

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