Programming, to someone with limited experience, may conjure up an emotion, making you feel some kind of way. To many of my friends, just the word could send them running for the hills, but for me, the word made me feel challenged and compelled to learn more. I took my first programming class in my freshman year of college to knock off a necessary class for my Biological Engineering major. It was EE160: Programming for Engineers. I came in with no programming experience at all but a high aptitude for learning and got brutally slaughtered. Every class made me feel like I knew nothing at all. I was constantly frustrated and metaphorically banging my head against the wall trying to get my code to work and utterly devastated when it wouldn’t. My brain felt like it was hammered after every class and I ended up getting my first B. However, for the first time, I finally found something interesting.
Programming lit a spark that led me to give it another go a year later, this time from the computer science department. My previous exposure to programming in C made programming in Java much easier. I already had the basics down after all. I still came into this class on the first day not knowing what to expect, except that there could be a chance it may also be as difficult, if not maybe even more, than the brutal Programming for Engineers class. Little did I know that ICS 111: Introduction to Computer Science would gently foster a warm little voice inside of me full of encouragement and the important can-do attitude. It reintroduced me to the world of programming and wiped away all the horrors from the class before. To be honest, I wish I took my first computer science course from the computer science department. There was so much more support, understanding, and gentleness from this class. To be honest, I couldn’t believe how great this class was so I enrolled in ICS 211: Introduction to Computer Science II to continue on and explore this path further.
I found that the more I took computer science classes, the easier programming came to me. Although, it doesn’t mean I am not being challenged. ICS 314: Software Engineering gives out little programming challenges every class session. They are called Work Out of the Day or WODs. Initially, the WODs were nerve-wracking, but I know the more I practice the more comfortable I will be with programming under pressure. This class is also introducing me to another programming language called Javascript. I’ll post more about my experiences with Javascript in a later post, but I am having the time of my life now with programming and just like anything else, it only gets easier with more practice.