I had my first experience with programming when I was 13. My uncle would spend an hour every Thursday teaching me Java. As much as I would love to be able to say that I had a natural affinity for it and that his efforts to teach me were not in vain, the truth was quite the opposite. After weeks of attempting to learn the basic fundamental concepts of Java, I grew to fear the language as opposed to appreciating its capabilities. I never understood why I was learning these things, and I didn’t understand why I needed to know about “for loops” and “classes.” I began to dread Thursdays, and I eventually promised myself that I would never write another line of code again. I broke that promise to myself in less than a year.
As a young teenager who was too shy for Twitter and too insecure for Instagram, I found the perfect social media platform for me: Tumblr. The creative potential, the anonymity, and the community of people who were different yet so similar to me really resonated with me, and I was completely immersed. My blog was one of the most important things to me, and I would update it religiously based on how I was feeling during that time. I wanted anyone who stumbled upon my page to understand me without actually knowing who I was. However, I soon realized that the design templates that were automatically provided by Tumblr left me with very limited means of expressing myself. I would look at other blogs with crazy widgets and cool backgrounds and I was stumped, wondering “How did they do that?”. This is when I was introduced to HTML. As much as I had convinced myself I hated any form of writing code, I loved my blog enough to push those fears aside and try learning a programming language again. Eventually, I familiarized myself with some fundamentals of HTML. It started with just changing my blog’s theme colors and eventually developed to creating themes of my own! I realized that although I didn’t love programming, I loved its capabilities and what I could accomplish with it. I just needed a chance to apply it to something I was interested in. As someone who has always been interested in art, I was so excited to see how I could incorporate my new knowledge of HTML with my creativity. This was a new outlet I never would have considered, and I realized that programming languages would be valuable to learn.
My favorite thing about my journey with learning computer science is that I no longer feel controlled by my code. Instead, I have the ability to be in control of everything. If I say something should be red, my computer asks, “What shade?”. As I progress on this journey of learning, I want to improve my programming skills so that I am able to program more effectively. That was never much of a concern of mine in the past, as I was not writing anything too complex. However, I know that learning to write more efficient code will save me time and nothing is more valuable than that. I would like to use the things that I learn in my computer science classes to explore new artistic outlets, whether it’s customization, design, or solving problems that require unconventional thinking. I truly believe that learning computer science opens up a whole new world of creative possibilities where there are endless ways to express yourself to the world. Whether I want to run a blog, create digital art, launch an app, or even mess with AI, learning computer science skills is extremely valuable and allows me to accomplish whatever I want to do in a way that is unique to me as an individual. Our individuality is what makes each of us special, and the way we customize things is intentional and directly related to who we are. The idea of expressing myself through customization is what sparked my interest in computer science, and I hope to continue to find other ways to express myself to the world.