One thing I’ve come to realize after spending some time doing web development is that I really don’t know if I have a lifelong passion for it. What initially drew me to it was the ease of entrepreneurship that is associated with the internet, and entrepreneurship is what initially drew me to tech. If I wanted to pursue entrepreneurial dreams in the form of building my own small business, that would most likely have to be within web development.

However, after two internships in front-end web development, a few personal projects, and now starting a full-time position in FE web dev, I really don’t know if I could do web development for the rest of my life. I don’t really know if it’s a matter of switching to back-end development either, as rarely does it involve exciting problems and often is just a means of interfacing with a database. The tangential parts of web development don’t really interest me either, having tried some Dev Ops responsibilities at an internship and now learning about and practicing cloud deployments and setup.

During my time at OSU, one of the classes and topics that truly interested me was low-level development. I kinda enjoyed Assembly in a twisted way, and I enjoyed the harsh struggle of Operating Systems. I really enjoyed learning C with all of its intricacies, and even went on to take Parallelism. However, when considering a career in embedded, many positions often require a masters and their pay often pales in comparison to more web focused roles.

Hopefully the answer for me lies in Web Assembly. I think it will be a good blend of my two interests, and will keep my work exciting enough to capture my attention for a whole career. I have ordered a book on the topic and will begin my journey down this path in the hope of finding something that fulfills me and my passion for Computer Science.