A few thoughts on math and computer science

Everyone has an arch nemesis in high school. Mine was the most brutal one of them all, a dominating persona who went by the name “Mathematics”. It was fairly obvious why Math and I had a mutual dislike for each other: I gave it wrong answers and it gave me bad grades.

But there comes a time in one’s life when one realises that having an arch nemesis is really exhausting. So like any logical individual, I decided to make peace with Math and started working a lot harder to gain a better understanding of it. I realised that Math has a wonderful simplicity to it and my fear of it had been as irrational as pi. I’m glad that my ex-arch nemesis is now my best friend, because Math happens to be the paintbrush that I need to complete both the paintings that I will be working on throughout life. One of those paintings is physics and the other one is computer science.

I started thinking of computers as more than huge, beige boxes when I saw my grandfather’s iPod touch for the first time. Gestures like flicking the screen to scroll and pinching to zoom which are now a common occurrence on smartphones really amazed me at that time. I learnt that all of this was possible through this mysterious thing that is aptly called “code”. I started reading more and more about programming and learnt the basics of HTML/CSS, C++ and Python online. It was a lot of fun building simple programmes that could arrange numbers in order of magnitude or calculate the tip that needs to be paid at a restaurant but there’s definitely a lot more that I want to do with code.

I intend to master Swift in the next few years so that I can finally make the iPhone app I’ve dreamed of making, one that teaches quantum mechanics to high school students through interactive lessons. I’d also love to contribute to the field of artificial intelligence in any way that I can. I think AI has the potential to bring about a revolution, much like the Industrial Revolution and the Internet and instead of just watching it happen, I’d like to be a part of it.