The Great Journey (of Software Engineering)
20 Jan 2017
“To finish the moment, to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have a love-hate relationship with software engineering. It started in my junior year of high school where we were assigned to code something in our TI-84 calculators. Our project was a success, we made a very simple stop-motion program that imitated the classic Track and Field game on the NES. But it was very tedious, and I thought, “If this is what computer programming is, no thanks.” Thankfully, when I went to my advisor before the start of college to change my major, I asked him if all programming is just like the programming on the calculator. He gave me a reassuring no, and thus my journey began.
Getting Your Feet Wet
My first year of coding was amazing. Every week you would learn something new, make something new, and be proud of what you made. It was unlike anything else I experienced in school. Then I learned about other operating systems, the command line, networking, cryptography, and so many other cool topics. But you don’t love coding every day, some days you hate C with a passion because it’s so unforgiving with the segmentation faults. But when it works, it’s the best language in the world.
Mastery
After taking a variety of courses and being exposed to many aspects of computer science, I want to delve into software engineering that deals with networks and network anonymity. I’d also like to get my feet wet in web development by learning Javascript and the many frameworks that accompany it. I want to master at least one language. To me that means spending at least 10,000 hours practicing it and developing world class software in that language. The end of my spring 2017 semester will allow me to make my decision on which language I’m going the long run with.
The Path Ahead
Besides the language side of software engineering, I want develop myself to become an excellent team leader, someone who the team can look to for vision, guidance, and expertise. Eventually, I want to move on to project management and executive positions, where my vision and decisions make more impact on the success of the project. A big bonus would be finding someone that’s embarking on the same journey as me, someone that I can relate to and will help keep me on my path. As they say, champions come in pairs.