Why Software Engineering

20 Jan 2022

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Algorithms. I first gained an appreciation for the word when I was 12 years old and learned how to solve a rubik’s cube through youtube videos. I didn’t know it applied to other things as well at the time, but when I took my first programming class in high school, I drew the connection and recognized programming as something I already loved. Coding to me is like solving a puzzle, and there’s nothing more satisfying than solving it once and then seeing that solution work over and over again. To build on that, there are always ways to improve the solution by making it quicker or more elegant. I think it’s beautiful the way that there are seemingly infinite ways to solve the same puzzle. While some ways are objectively better than others, a lot of solutions are relatively equivalent but manage to display the different ways in which peoples’ minds work.

Software engineering has always been my primary academic interest and it is the only thing I’ve studied where I ended up spending more time on the topic than required and would pursue well into my free time. While my experience with the topic first started in high school, I didn’t pursue academia immediately after graduating in lieu of other pursuits such as traveling abroad and joining the Marine Corps. I’m mostly interested in software and data structures, but I do have a curiosity about robotics and would like to attempt at least one project of this type in the future.