Minecraft = Software Engineer?
20 Jan 2022Legos and Minecraft!?
In elementary school, I joined the robotics club. In this club, we programmed the Lego Mindstorm robots to complete tasks such as detecting pieces of tape and grabbing items and moving them into a box. Since we were in elementary school, we were only introduced to basic block coding in order to get our robots to do the given tasks. I also enjoyed playing around with computers from elementary school to middle school. I loved playing Minecraft, but I also enjoyed playing modified versions of Minecraft where you could revive dinosaurs, and play Pokemon in Minecraft. Since this was not a part of the regular game, you had to play around with the directories and download clients in order to play these modified versions of Minecraft. When it came time for me to declare my major, I wanted to choose something that I would enjoy doing (and would make my mom happy). I reminisced about my time playing around with my computer and robotics, and ultimately decided to major in computer science. Although the things I would do in this major are astronomically more complicated than what I did as a kid, I am determined to learn more about the technology and systems that I used to toy with.
Into the Unknown (Not the Frozen song)
To be completely honest, I don’t really know what a software engineer is. All my knowledge about the job either comes from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics website or Wikipedia. One reason why I decided to take this class was to find out for myself what being a software engineer is like, and the skills it takes in order to be one. While I was looking at the course website for the Fall 2021 semester, I noticed that there were opportunities to learn different languages and work with different applications. Even with the little knowledge I have on software engineering, I know that having experience in multiple languages and IDEs looks good on your resume. Since I’ve taken ICS 111 and 211, I only have experience with one language, Java. I saw this class as an opportunity to expand my knowledge with other languages. Getting my feet wet in more languages is something I hope to develop more in the future. As the first week of this semester has gone by, I noticed that this class emphasizes working in a group or with a partner. The first activity we did was to brainstorm ideas in a group, and do the practice WODs with a partner. This kind of took me by surprise since I don’t really like working in groups. I think this goes for everyone, but I only enjoy group projects when I get to work with my friends. I also have been plowing through college without working or communicating with classmates, so doing an assignment with a partner kind of shocked me. Even in high school, I despised group work since I found dealing with people who aren’t my friends to be extremely stressful. I guess this is just a subtle way of saying I’m introverted… Anyways, I hope to be able to break out of my shell and work with my classmates. Even if I’m diving head first into something I have little to no knowledge of, I’m still open to and excited to learn more about software engineering.