Why software engineering?

Hello world.

Welcome to my first blogpost. This is going to be my journal of whatever I run into while coding. My thoughts, aha-moments, obstacles, freak outs, or any other tech related things.

I started to embark on my journey of software engineering after a long period of existential crisis. It was a moment of relief when I realized this as an actual possibility for my future.

From a young age I was always interested in programming. I was first exposed to it when I was a middle school lass, and I edited my own shop layout with HTML in Neopets. Then during the era of MySpace, I moved on to manipulating my own profile and used JavaScript to hide my music player so nobody can pause the song, or steal my clout. You wanted to know what band was playing in the background whenever you came to my page? Too bad. You don’t like the song? Too bad. Who would have thought that a 10 year old would be toying with things that now pay a 6 figure salary?

Throughout the years technology advanced and became more profound. The environment that it grew in became so vast - it was intimidating. After being out of practice once MySpace ended, there were so many cool things that were evolving in the tech and software engineering world it made me think, “Wow that looks so hard how could I ever even come up with doing something like that?” It must take a certain kind of person or a brain to do that, I don’t think I have that. Plus around me growing up there were no women around me that were in STEM for me to look up to and know it was a possibility.

I was my own worst enemy. I talked myself out of exploring that world. But sis, you’ve been playing in that world already.

The pandemic gave me a lot of time for self reflection, and also made me rethink what I’m capable of and reframe my lack of confidence. “You can’t do this, it’s too hard and will take too long.” That voice that came from fear turned into “Lol why not… ur an idiot for thinking that… you lived alone in JAPAN and learned JAPANESE. You tiled a Baroque style vector in HTML to put as your background on MySpace when you were 14 and changed the font accordingly to fit the theme. You’re THAT girl.” I realized…yes I am that girl aren’t I 💁‍♀️.

The tech world and the world of programming was something that I always gravitated towards. Even in my short professional career that I’ve had thus far, I would leave my department sometimes to go hang out with the other developers/coders (I guess that’s foreshadowing). I felt comfortable around them, I respected them. It was easy talking to them. I realized we are similar types of people.

I’m excited for my journey, and to see the things that I create. I can’t even begin to imagine what the route will look like. Plus I can’t wait to actually be like Angelina Jolie in Hackers.