There are a lot of good reasons for choosing a college major. Some key things that come to mind when thinking about computer science are: valuable skills, a growing job market, longevity of said jobs, above average pay, etc. etc. The things that stand out the most to me however is the knowledge of how to learn new skills and the ability to create whatever I want to. Software engineering is a part of computer science that interests me the most. As much as some find an interest in the deep mathematical side of computer science like algorithms or optimization, I love to create things.
Before learning how to code I loved to create things. Whether it be drawing, writing, building or even cooking, I find a lot of joy in making something myself. Software engineering and the skillset we will be learning in this class is just a powerful tool that will allow me to create more at a professional level. In previous classes we often were tasked to create things with the intent of exercising whatever skillset we were practicing for the week. This format didn’t ignite the passion for creation within me, doing assignments felt restrictive and tiring. The guidelines we were given understandably didn’t allow for much deviation. There were usually only a handful of ways we could go about doing an assignment. Like I mentioned, I don’t find computer science for computer science’s sake particularly interesting. I see the importance of learning the fundamentals, sure, but do I really find sorting algorithms interesting? Not really.
The times when we are given freedom is what truly inspires me. Out of all of the projects featured on my page, the one I enjoyed the most was most certainly my Pokemon Damage Calculator despite it being one of the most simple programs I have made. This was a project I completed for an AP computer science class in high school. The freedom to do what I wanted was what pushed me to pursue computer science in the first place. To complete this project I had to do my own research and learn how to use tools I was previously unfamiliar with, similar to what we are going to be doing extensively in ICS 314.
Being able to create what I want out of nothing is one of my favorite things. Software engineering simply gives me the avenue to develop my programming skills, allowing me to create things at a larger scale. More than just programming, we will learn how to collaborate with others and use powerful resources to complete tasks that would previously take an entire semester to work up to. So what am I looking forward to in this software engineering course? I’m looking forward to having some fun.