Why I Became a Software Engineer
My name is David Harris. Growing up, I always had a passion for problem solving, and I knew I wanted a career that used it in some way.
The only fields I was really exposed to from a young age were music and math. I’m a cellist, pianist, and guitarist. I love reading analyzing complex rhythms in sheet music and studying music theory, and I love solving math problems.
Throughout high school I spent a lot of time improving in both fields. For music, I played in orchestra, wrote songs on my guitar, and did some performances here and there. For math, I took as many math classes as I could in high school and learned more via Khan Academy.
When I started college, I initially double majored in Music and Math, but I decided that I would major in Math and minor in Music, as I wasn’t passionate enough in Music as a career.
The main reason why I majored in Math was because while I loved it, there wasn’t really a field of mathematics (e.g. teaching, actuarial science, mechanical/electrical engineer) that seemed very interesting to me, but I figured this degree would be a good place to start to branch out into other fields that may use math in some way.
One day, in my freshman Calculus class, I met a guy named Caleb who was a Computer Science major. “Computer Science? What’s that?” I asked.
I had never heard of programming in my life. I never really thought about how computers or the internet worked, so when he was telling me that you could use algorithms like math problems to create and help people in the real world, I was intrigued.
The following year I decided that to take a Fundamentals of Programming class. The language taught was C++, a super low-level language, so for someone who’s literally never written a line of code in his life, learning C++ and creating projects to survive not failing the class was a nightmare. The class was at 8 a.m., the teacher wasn’t very helpful, I struggled to understand on top of the other classes that I was taking, and the labs/tests were just awful. I managed to pass, but I told myself that I would never be a programmer.
I began to consider the idea of being a Math teacher, so after my sophomore year, I decided to take a year off and do missionary work as a math teacher in Honduras. You can read more about my experience in Honduras here (ignore the first post), but I basically determined that teaching wasn’t for me.
During my junior and senior years, I found that I wasn’t really enjoying my math classes anymore. I enjoyed the problem solving, but I knew that proof classes and random theorems from Partial Differential Equations would not make my life fulfilling. However, I was committed to finishing my degree and figure out next steps in my career.
As I was thinking about career goals senior year, Caleb suggested that I should give programming another chance. I began doing some research first semester.
Intro to Web Development. That seems interesting. The course was just HTML and CSS. When I began writing h1 tags and seeing text rendered on a screen, I was fascinated. Learning the complexities of CSS to add effects was exhilarating.
I began to consider the idea of making websites for a living. I was having way more fun in this class than my math classes. For once, I could solve problems to create amazing products that can actually help people in the real world. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do this for the rest of my life, but I figured it would be a great place to start.
However, there was only one problem. I didn’t have a Computer Science degree, and there was no way I was going to major in CS for 4 more years. I knew there had to be another way, and I was determined to figure it out.
