Ever since high school, I knew that I wanted to pursue a career in design. Whether it be engineering, game art, music production, as long as it allowed my creativity to spark, I was interested. However, I didn’t expect programming to be something I would like. As someone without any knowledge of software engineering, it just seemed like a bunch of math and formulas, which I hated (and still strongly dislike.)
I took ICS 111 during my freshman year as a fun class, because my brother apparently enjoyed his high school computer science class. It was in this class that I realized what programming was really like. Even though the projects were simple, even the simplest ones were interesting to me. My favorite subjects were learning the different loop statements and combining them with conditional statements to create more complex algorithms. Even though it has a strong relationship with math, the approach is different and doesn’t irk me the way traditional math classes do.
Since then until now, I am very eager to see what comes next. For my current class, ICS 314, I’m hoping to get a clear understanding of what web development will be like in the professional world. Right now, the paths I plan to delve into are game development, security, and web development. For my future, game development seems like a further goal than the others because of its current relevance in Hawai’i’s job market. Security, web development, and software engineering seem like the most practical paths for the next ten years.
No matter which path I take, it’s clear to me that the things I will be doing in ICS 314 will help tremendously in achieving, and maybe even realizing my goals. I am very excited to learn the new softwares, languages, and methods, despite its relevance to my future.