How I got into software engineering

January 31, 2023

From as early as I could remember, I always enjoyed tinkering with things. I loved unscrewing my toys to discover how they worked and attempting to put them back together (most of them didn’t work after).

In middle school, computers started to become much more available. We had classes that introduced us to Scratch and HTML. Many of my friends had game consoles, some had access to decent family computers, while others were already building their own PCs. Most importantly, they all had access to video games like Minecraft and Call of Duty. And, I did not.

That all seemed to change when my dad brought home a used Lenovo ThinkPad T500 laptop. Finally, with access to my own machine, I was ready to play with my friends and become the greatest Minecraft “Let’s Play” YouTuber. But after downloading the game, my dreams were quickly shattered. My shitty laptop simply couldn’t run the game.

However, not all hope was lost. Around the same time, my dad also bought a Lenovo IdeaPad K1 tablet for family use. I had never used a device like this with a large touch screen and a weird thing called Android. But it didn’t matter, because I could finally access Minecraft… Pocket Edition… Free trial. Close enough.

I remember weekend ski trips where I would make sure to keep the app open at all times so that my world wouldn’t get deleted.

Eventually, either through Google Play Rewards or some very nice asking, I was able to get the full edition of MC:PE. But it wasn’t enough. Through the magic of the internet, I found myself on Minecraft Forums, Twitter, and YouTube, where people were editing in items that weren’t officially released yet.

BEFORE

It all started around when my dad brought home a Lenovo IdeaPad K1 tablet and a used ThinkPad T500. I fell in love with the mobile game Minecraft: Pocket Edition (MC:PE). My obsession with the game resulted in me creating a Twitter account to tweet at an MC:PE developer.

Through Twitter, Google+, Minecraft Forum, and elsewhere, I discovered graphic design, Linux distros, mechanical keyboards, and custom Android ROMs. After installing Xubuntu on my T500 and a custom ROM on my K1, these devices became way more customizable and performant (I could finally run actual Minecraft on my PC). I realized that I loved tinkering with software.

I probably started “real coding” around 2013-2014. I took classes in high school such as AP Computer Science, and I was fortunate enough to be able to attend some summer camps. My most relevant experience came from a summer program at WPI. There, I worked on an Android app that allowed users to take pictures of and identify bumblebees (crowdsourcing/citizen science), which was then used to study pollinator decline. I think the “code” I wrote was almost all XML (no actual business logic) because I was converting the app to be “Material Design,” but it was a great experience nonetheless. I also got to build the website, which somehow still exists today. This is where I fell in love with building frontends.

At Cornell, I studied computer science, so the path is pretty boring from there. I continued working on Android apps and picked up modern web development (Vue, then React, and now [insert whatever is sexy in 2022]). I interned at student “startups,” Qualtrics, and Robinhood.

Currently, I work full-time at Robinhood, where I make pretty screens and buttons.

Thanks for reading :)

Last updated December 29, 2024