I entered my freshman year at UH Manoa as an “Exploratory Business” major. I didn’t even know what that meant. I didn’t know much after graduating high school. All I could think was “What Now?”. “So then what happens?”. On a whim I decided to take ICS 111 to try it out. From the very first System.out.println("Hello World");, I was hooked.
Still a very confused freshman, I went about my days in my ICS recitations amused but bewildered. The concepts themselves were basic, yet I knew they were the atoms to the cells that make up our body. I wanted to keep knowing more but I realized that programming is a discipline as much as it is a skill. You can’t be amazing at it in a year or even two, or three. What guided me in the first place to ICS is my fascination with technology. I originally had an interest in mostly IT, but I wanted to do more. Programming is a technology, as areas are changing and improving by the day. It’s hard to keep up, and so you just have to come to terms with just not. If there was one thing I learned in my first semester, it was to accept ignorance as, not a sign of unintelligence, but curiosity waiting to fill the gaps.
Second semester did not treat me too kindly. My two ICS courses left me bruised and battered by the end. It was more the combination of taking these courses along with some other difficult courses that had me mentally fatigued by the end of the week. At the same time, my knowledge increased exponentially. More knowledge gaps were filled while many other gaps were uncovered. Such is the nature of Computer Science.
This brings me to ICS 314. Honestly, I have no one thing that I want to be. That “What Now?” I had after my high school graduation still follows me. Though, I definitely have some interest in Web Development. I see it as one the most important areas of software engineering given heavy use of the web since forever, but even more now. Nothing is certain but I can see myself as a web developer one day. I want to improve my skill with Javascript and also data and algorithm analysis, as I think they are just as important in software engineering. I also hope I confront the “What Now” lurking in my shadows.