Engineering my future
22 Jan 2020Baby steps
When I first heard stories about the difficulties of majoring in software engineering, I was intimidated. I started out my computer science career from taking a STEM course in high school. I always knew that I would want to work with technology and luckily our STEM class taught coding. We first worked with some web development through HTML and CSS. In the following year we programmed in javascript to create small functions such as a calculator, as well as working on small games. I had a lot of fun working on projects with friends and learning how a computer worked. I then knew that I wanted to work with computers.
When I enrolled into University of Hawaii I knew I had to determine which major I wanted to go into, and within my first semester I decided to declare as an ICS major. Within ICS there are many pathways to take and I hadn’t had enough experience to know what I wanted to do after college yet. As I continued to do research online about the pathways I could go through I came to the conclusion that I wanted to go into software engineering, machine learning, game development. I was intrigued with all three, and all have their own difficulties. My interest in software engineering is the purity of computer science the pathway is. Through software engineering I would have to build a strong foundation and understanding of multiple languages, along with great proficiency. Technology is a constantly changing game, especially as a software engineer. I believe it would be a great experience to challenge how far I can get with it.
Predicting the future
Although I’m already in my second year of college, I still feel it’s too early to make a decision on which pathway to take. Going through all three pathways and experiencing each one in their own collective courses would not be an efficient use of my time. Instead I have already planned projects to do with my friends. Regardless of what I choose in the future, the application of a class that incorporates software engineering, would without a doubt improve my skills in coding overall. I would be exceptionally happy if I were able to take much of the things I learn from this class into future projects I do, as well as the workplace.