Baby Steps
21 Jan 2021
A Generational Gap
Software Engineering felt so sci-fi for my parents. Back in their days, the internet was a waste of money because of how slow it was. But nowadays the entire world, let alone just my parents practically live on the internet. In the same vein, software engineering was the future during my parents’ time. Now software engineering is here, yet its future seems so bright. We’re living in the future and I want to be able to help keep the technological ball rolling. Software engineering being part of my path to that future, is going to become an integral part of my life for a while. But at the same time, this path is more akin to an uphill climb because it’s been so difficult for me.
Am I Multilingual Now?
If someone unfamiliar with software engineering were to look at some lines of code, they’d look at it as if they were seeing a foreign language. That’s exactly what they’re doing. Software engineering includes writing a lot of code. Writing code is similar to writing in some sort of language whether it be English, Korean, German, or any other world language. This is the case because code is synonymous with computer language. Hence why all the different formats of writing code are called different coding languages. Just like the world has English, Japanese, and Chinese as possible written and spoken languages, software engineering has Java, Javascript, Python, C++, etc. But much like learning a new language, getting into software engineering has been incredibly difficult. There are completely new syntaxes to remember. A lot of different new-ish vocabulary. And what makes learning software engineering personally much more difficult to learn than real-world languages is that you have to write your “sentences” in algorithms. I just need a lot more time to adjust such that I understand algorithms as much as I understand English. I feel like currently I’m writing and reading code at a 1st-grade level so I’m hoping to bump that up to at least 2nd grade in the future!
The Future is Now but am I There Yet?
Software engineering is the future and it’s here and has been here for decades. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to pick up and gradually learn Software engineering as I did in English. Compounded on the fact that apparently, I’m a very slow learner when it comes to programming languages, software engineering has been a very painful trough to slog through. However, it may have been incredibly difficult but I still had fun along the way. I enjoyed first learning Java in my first ICS class because I was able to see the possibilities that were available to me with just the very basics. When I first decided to major in computer science and start learning software engineering, I did so because I wanted to enter the video game industry and help make video games. Lo and behold, my first ICS class included making a bunch of projects that were video games. That’s one of the most interesting parts of software engineering to me - the possibilities. In the future, I want to continue doing what I learned and did so briefly in that computer science class. I want to continue to make video games and make stuff that I want to make. But because it’s such an uphill climb to get there, it’s gonna take baby steps. First I understand the basics of a language. Then I start to pick up on algorithms and adjusting to the software engineer mindset. Eventually, I hone these two skills and catch up to the future which is the present. I’m gonna do it step by step and eventually become a great software engineer.