Today I wanted to dive into my history with programming. I started being interested in programming when I was 12 years old. Like you would expect of a kid that age I was only interested in programming in order to make video games, which lead me to select C++ as the language I wanted to learn. My dad helped me start learning the language by working through an introductory book with me for a little while. However, it didn’t take long for me to lose interest in this due to the difficulty in learning the language but more importantly my own impatience.
Following my loss of interest in traditional programming I picked up Scratch, a block based programming language which was far more kid friendly. I spent a fair amount of time over the next couple of years creating my own small games. There was also a website where users could share their programs with each other. I remember spending time looking through this site until a game design or style caught my eye and then running off to create my own game based on it. While I never created anything large or groundbreaking, these games helped me learn a number of programming concepts.
When I was older, my dad convinced me to try a traditional programming language again. Him and I followed a series of recorded college lectures which taught python to beginners. Following this class I continued making programs for fun as I had done with Scratch using this new medium. I still made some games using python but also branched out and made different types of programs. During this time I realized I was not very interested in creating games but I was interested in programming.
Jumping ahead to college, I started my higher education going to Linn Benton Community College. As I had been home-schooled my entire life, this was the first time I had been in a classroom setting. I was happy to learn that the introductory course was also taught in python. I also learned a new language in the CS 161 and 162 courses because they used Java. One of the last courses I took at LBCC was a course in the C programming language, which was a style of language I had not touched since I was 12.
Since I transferred to OSU, I have learned many new languages. In web development I learned JS, operating systems taught me BASH, and I learned SQL from introduction to databases. The list of languages I have learned at OSU also includes Haskell, MatLab, and C++ among others
I hope to graduate this spring and continue my adventure of programming with a career where I can learn new skills and grow as a programmer.
