Cross-posted from Data Driven Journalism.

Earlier this year I set out to tackle a problem that was bothering me: journalists who had started to learn programming were giving up.

They were hitting a wall. In trying to learn the more advanced programming techniques – particularly those involved in scraping – they seemed to fall into one of two camps:

• People who learned programming, but were taking far too long to apply it, and so losing momentum – the generalists
• People who learned how to write one scraper, but could not extend it to others, and so becoming frustrated – the specialists

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