Here We Go Again
20 Jan 2022
What Do I Want to Do?
Sometimes when you learn something new, you find that you can’t think about anything else. New shows, new games, new hobbies, you just find yourself think about it constantly. Eventually you might stop actively thinking about it, but sometimes it makes such an impact that you still find yourself wanting more. Ever since I was a kid, I was always fascinated by how things are made. I always thought the ability to create something new was amazing, and wanted to do so myself. I tried art and woodworking with varying levels of success. While working on those, I realized something. I’ve also enjoyed technology all my life, so why don’t I try working with something tech related. And since I’ve always wondered how programs were made, I made my choice to start learning software engineering. Many of my hobbies involve software in some way, so knowing how it works will improve my daily life. In addition, certain people in my life have difficulty with technology, so having knowledge on technology will allow me to help them out.
The Road So Far
The path I’ve taken thus far has been interesting. When I first had those thoughts about learning code, I never realized how much there was to learn. I never thought it was going to be too easy, because otherwise everyone would know how to do it. I knew people compared coding to learning another language, and while I admittedly find coding easier than learning an actual language, I can now see what they mean. For example, I didn’t know that there were several different coding languages, each with their own syntax. I thought there would be one or two, or at the very least one or two that I would need to know, and yet out of the six I’ve been working on, only Java has come up more than once. While some of them are similar like I thought it would be, others are completely different from one another. This does give me problems on occasion, struggling to remember what code works in which language. I also tend to overthink the code sometimes, spending a large amount of time on problems that don’t exist. That being said, I do manage to get things working in the end, and when I truly understand how a program is supposed to work I’m able to work on it in a decent amount of time, and I often develop creative solutions to problems with my code. I wouldn’t say I’m the best at code, but I am working on being better.
Where I’m going
While I’ve done a decent amount of things already, there’s still more things I want to accomplish. For instance, there isn’t much point to learning all of this if I don’t actually use it anywhere. Luckily, I do have a goal in mind, that goal being to make a video game in the future. But before I do that, I want to improve on some things first. First, I still want to get more practice with coding. Having the ability to work efficiently and be able to solve unusual problems with consistency are skills I still need to work on. To that end I hope to work on more complicated projects in the future. I would also like to learn how to work in a team setting. Most of my coding work was done by myself, so I would like to be able to work with others as well, especially if I’m going to do a project as big as a video game. Finally, I hope to improve my general ability use technology. I may use technology on a regular basis, but I often find myself getting stuck when a technical issue occurs. I want to be able to solve them without having to ask someone for help. Hopefully these are things I can work on in the near future.