My interest in computers started when I was in elementary school when my parents would let me play online flash games on our family laptop. I was amazed that a computer could do so much and still be small enough to carry around. Every time we would go to the computer lab in elementary school I would get really excited and want to be the first in line. My interest in computers continued through high school where I took my first computer class called “A+ Certification” in freshman year. I think the teacher was what made that class special and he made learning about computer components fun. After taking this more hardware related class, I got more interested in programming and the software side of computers. I took the second year of A+ Certification and also a networking class the next year. In junior year I took AP Computer Science and that class convinced me that I should be studying computer science in college. In high school, I wasn’t that motivated to try my hardest in class but I was still able to get pretty good grades, especially in my computer related classes. Currently I am interested in learning or at least experiencing as many languages as I can to diversify my knowledge and increase my chances of getting hired.
I have a lot of random skills in different areas, but I wouldn’t say I’m that good at any one of them. My dad is a handyman so I go help him fix houses and build things which is a good opportunity to diversify my knowledge from things you can learn in school. I’ve never learned how to change a window or rebuild a mailbox in school and I never will, but my dad has also never taught me how to make a program on my computer. Growing up with such different experiences has made me strive to be versatile in all aspects of my life, including programming. I have only been programming and doing software engineering for a few years now so I don’t have that many skills currently. As of now, I have experience with Scratch, Python, Java, C, C++, and a little Javascript. I know there are many more languages than this which is why I don’t mind that many computer science classes at the university have us learn different languages. The thing I have learned most about switching languages almost every semester so far is that the solution to a problem can be found without knowing how to put it into a certain language. For example, you could create a pseudocode and test it before ever typing a character of the language you plan to use for the finished program. The syntax of each language might be different, but the structure of most of them are either the same or very similar. I like to be versatile, so it’s fun for me to learn new things in all kinds of fields, not just computer science.
I’ve played team sports since I was like 5 years old so I know that a team can get much more done than a single person in just about every situation. All but one of my computer science classes up to this point have been individual, make your own small program every week type of assignments. I know this is the best way to make sure each student learns the basics of programming, but what I am looking forward to is working with groups of people to finish larger projects in a much shorter time than an individual could ever dream of. I know not everyone is used to working with others, but in real life work, you have to get along and work together with coworkers to get your work done. In this class and in the future, I want to gain more experience in working as a team as well as leading a team of programmers to get work done more efficiently. This class in particular seems like a great opportunity to try it out with peers that are all studying computer science and could possibly end up being peers when we graduate and get jobs.