I'm an old-school modeler. Excel. Specifically, I have been building complex Excel models since 1993. I'm not a data scientist by training or background, but I do have a BS in applied math, circa 1986!

Over the years, I've taught myself how to kludge stuff together in VBA, PHP, and maybe a couple of others. All programming I've ever done is strictly self-taught, and stiched-together-code-other-people-have-written.

I've recently been teaching myself R & Neo4J. It's slow (and embarrassing) going sometimes, but I'm definitely getting the hang of it. I use this stuff mostly for exploratory analysis - but I often generate ideas for things by playing. They're usually ideas I don't have the full set of skills to develop alone, though.