Experience and Ideas

I discuss how personal experience drives ideas.

I am a career-changer into computer science. Starting as a student in geography, I found computer programming when I had to take a Python class late into my degree.

I have loved learning computer science ever since.

During the few computer science classes I’ve taken, the concept of generating ideas stood out to me as a unique challenge. In my previous education in geography, work revolved around studying and analyzing existing information to find solutions. In contrast, computer science seems to seek out new problems and solve them. As a student taking classes and building a portfolio, these problems often feel like finding the very project ideas to start in the first place.

My favorite CS classes have always involved group work. As a student, these classes are the closest thing you can get to real world experience of working on a software team with other developers. But outside of a company with designated work requirements, students sometimes struggle to define project ideas and goals. I personally have gone through this; I start a class, find a group and just want to contribute my part of the work to enhance my technical and teamwork skills. However, a huge part of these projects that goes overlooked is the aspect of creating the idea. Sometimes I am on a group that is budding with project ideas, and sometimes not.

This is where I think computer science has a unique advantage as a field. People from various backgrounds draw on their experiences to come up with unique problems to solve with computer science solutions. My favorite part of computer science is seeing this vast diversity of problems and solutions. From fellow students’ ideas to the missions that drive companies in the ‘real world’, technology can apply indirectly or directly to so many issues in the world.

When choosing a project for CS467, I almost felt overwhelmed by the amount of possible projects to choose from. However, since my passion in this course has weighed more heavily towards the experience of team work, finding good teammates set my mind at ease more than reaching a decision for a project idea. Our project choice is an audio program, and although I have no experience with audio technology, I feel confident and excited to start the project with the team that I have found.