YouTube

Honestly, if I had to pick where I actually learned how to build things, it wouldn't be a classroom—it would definitely be YouTube. It's been my real-world university for years now.

I spent countless hours going down rabbit holes, but the real game-changer for me was Nitish sir. His teaching is just on another level. He has this way of making even the most terrifying machine learning math feel like something you could explain to a friend over coffee. Without his videos, I'd probably still be stuck just reading about AI instead of actually getting my hands dirty with it.

Beyond the ML basics, I basically used YouTube to teach myself the "grown-up" version of tech—things like MLOps, how to actually deploy models so they don't just sit on my laptop, and how distributed systems work. It's where I learned that data engineering is just as cool (and maybe more important) than the models themselves.

Seeing everyone else share their knowledge eventually gave me the itch to do the same. That's why I started my own channel, thisisdatasea. Now I'm the one recording data podcasts and talking to people who are better than me, just trying to keep the cycle going. It's my way of giving back to the same community that taught me everything. You can find me over at thisisdatasea if you want to see what I'm up to.