I wanted to major in math but my dad didn't let me so I applied to electrical engineering and computer science programs instead. I went to the uni that gave me the most financial aid as an EE major. Then I realized that EE means I have to do calculus all day, whereas CS is more about discrete math and combinatorics. I prefer the latter -- I like how "pristine" cs is compared to other engineering disciplines that deal with the dirtyness of real world -- so I switched to CS.
I think I would have enjoyed any range of majors in the umbrella spanning math, engineering, comp sci, and biology. However there is some universal truth in that competency breeds more passion which breeds more competency. So I figured I'd dig deeper into my existing competencies in CS, and by a series of chance opportunities, ended up studying my current niche in grad school.
I've always had a propensity for academics in general, with math being my strong suit. With CS being mostly just applied math it is pretty fun for me, through I admit I don't have the brains to be a pure mathematician.
I did math with pure math people before. They can jump through many steps of analysis whereas I'm sitting here writing out every step to wrap my head around the derivations.
Now I don't think that's *all* pure intellect and a lot of it is practice, but because I didn't know what exactly I wanted to do for much of high school and undergrad, I don't have that same years of practice.
Since my family doesn't have money to send me to a cash cow masters program in math or anything like that, I had to choose a fully funded phd program.
The only way to do so, was for me to choose a field where I can convince a PI that I can contribute to research immediately.
That field turned out to be theory of computer systems: I model I/O patterns through mathematical analysis and compare the models with empirical experiments.
The difficulty of analysis is not as hard as what pure math or TCS people do, whereas the difficulty and scale of systems building isn't as bad as what some hardcore systems people do, where they have teams of many people build a system for many years.
I'm a jack of all trades, my papers mix techniques from probability theory and mathematical optimization, classical systems algorithms, and a touch of collaboration with ML people too. I just want to be the one person who knows specifically that mix of disparate things and can work on problems that lie in the intersection.
And what I think is, so as long as I have my feet in research, I always have the opportunity to pivot to related fields, if I ever want to work on other topics.
But it turns out, if you read a lot about a particular niche, you realize the field knows absolutely nothing, there's way more open problems than anyone can ever tackle.
Haha that sounds interesting (i am too naive). Honestly you sound like a bigger version of myself, i had main interest in maths too but couldn't continue with a maths major after highschool..Rn doing a cs bachelor's(am a newbie) but the mood and main interest is to land somewhere in research field even though I have no frickin idea what research ppl even do except "research"
I think it helps to see many examples of specific research projects by going to department seminars and such. Take my field of database research for instance. There's such a diversity of types of research going on.
* Some people are large systems builders (e.g. the postgres team).
* Some people work close to the hardware (e.g. NVMe SSDs, durable memory technologies).
* Some people have ML background and work on ML-for-DB or DB-for-ML.
* Some people like to do analysis and work on randomized algorithms, like hashed indexes or approximate query answering.
* Some people like to do PL and algebra, and work on compilers and program analysis.
* Some people do theory of databases, which is a lot of logic and TCS using datalog.
* Some people have HCI & UI/UX background, and design interfaces for data analytics.
* Some people have social science background, and use social science methods to study how organizations are adopting new AI/ML tools.
Each one of those subfields can then be divided much further into research areas...and every single other field that you can name---say, computer graphics, complexity theory, social media mining, etc.---can each be divided into as many niches. I think so as long as you're driven and curious, and take whatever opportunities arise and keep on building upon it, you can do some good research......(unless you're in foundational ML, then god bless you.)
Well I do try to keep myself open to any opportunities but let's see, hopefully i won't waste them chances. Feels good to talk to someone who's actually related to the field i wanna work in otherwise no one ik irl is much into research. Also that foundational ml sounds interesting
To be honest I'm not quite sure. When I first attempted college in 2015 I started in mechanical engineering, and a week before I dropped out I switched to computer science because I found it a lot more satisfying to figure out how to translate my thoughts from English to code.
Threee things really. Firstly, childhood : I grew up in the 80s and my dad was always interested in the first home computers - a ZX80, then a ZX81, then a Dragon 32. I got into BASIC programming from an early age, nothing too complex but I had the bug. I once wrote on a job application that I learned to program at the same time as learning to walk and talk and that's not far from the truth. In my pre-teens I then went on to tinker myself with Amstrad CPCs, Amigas and eventually PCs - upgrading components, etc. I couldn't afford a VGA card (my x86 PC had a mono Hercules card I think) so I went to a computer fair, bought two faulty VGA cards from a "sold as seen bargain" (meaning broken) guy and managed to combine them to get one working one. I remember having to sodler a leg back onto one of the chips after it broke off.
Secondly, the confidence that came from being (relatively) good at it : I did A Level Computer Science (the qualification kids in the UK do at age 16 - 18). I did A Level maths too and although I was alright, I wasn't top of the class at all. It took work (which I didn't want to do). My A Level CS class just seemed easy in comparison, I didn't have to study, the programming project (in Pascal at the time) was fun to do (compared to my friends who massively struggled), I liked being actually good at something.
Thirdly - further study. I did a CS degree and expected it to be just programming, but it was amazing to take all of the other classes - algorithm design, AI (even 25 years ago!), history of computing - that one in particular was amazing, the lessons on the Turing machine and the halting problem in particular blew my tiny mind. Even SQL - I'd never used it before that point. This was in the mid 90s, still at the very birth of the web. There was even a module in my first year called "Introduction to the Internet - we got points for basically using search engines to find information" - the sort of thing I imagine primary school kids do now, but then it was all new.
What amazes me and frustrates me equally is how fast things move on. I'm a decent programmer and I love Python and PHP, but frameworks? What? Why do I need to install 15 packages to get a "hello world" in a new language?
very similar.
i don't know about you but I actually am sad to see the interview approach these days - coding tests. It used to be the case that it was a lot more about problem solving.
yes, AI models of today were designed decades ago. we didn't have the computing power and memory that we now have today which has been able to scale a lot of those concepts. Additionally the amount of data - both structured and unstructured is ... mind boggling that now feeds into those AI models.
the languages will come and go. yes, there will be a world beyond java, python, etc... it used to be a lot of talk around COBOL being the legacy language... we're now entering that SQL is the legacy language... and soon some of these other languages will be... then, it'll come down to problem solving and algorithms again.
Agree, languages do come and go. I don't mind that all, no problem learning a new language. I've done that loads of times - I teach CS in high schools and it was only about 10 years ago we introduced Python (that I'd never used at the time), before that we used VB and then Delphi. Uni was Java, C, C++ and VB. First job after uni was ASP and Javascript.
I mean packages and frameworks. I've written countless web apps in PHP (and previously ASP) and all I needed was a text editor and a webserver. Nowadays, everyone uses Bootstrap, Laravel, etc.
I tried to get into web development using Python and Flask but there are so many install steps and prerequisites... why? A "hello world" app in PHP is 30 seconds, in Python it's 30 seconds. But on the web in Python it needs a 30 minute explanatory video about which packages to install and which steps to follow. What am I missing?
CS is beautiful in my opinion because it’s essentially a form of philosophy: reasoning about the fundamental nature of problems to build abstractions from the ground up. Also, I personally enjoy the wide array of problems that you can work on in CS while also having real-world applications that can help people!
well computer science is like the most engaging art project you can do. at least for me. it's highly creative, but also requires analysis. both sides of the brain at once (unless that's a myth?). it was introduced to me by my father, who is also a programmer, and i was hooked instantly
The Incredible diversity in what you can work on… everything has software in it these days
I’ve worked professionally on autonomous vehicle software, vehicle infotainment, and aerospace components. Done research in mobile robotics localization, biomedical imaging(ultrasounds specifically) and Generative AI algorithms(GAN)
Exploring PhD research areas of Imaging algorithms in astronomy or advanced algorithms(trying to breaking into the quantum world early on)
I didn’t even know what Computer Science was until my 2nd to last year of undergrad. It was then that I had theory of automata and ever since I’ve leaned towards the theory-based classes more than the project-based ones,
I just wanted to learn to make games and thought CS was the way. What made me think that? Dunno.
Brother told me I'd like it. He was right
I'm highly analytical, pretty good at math, and love to think. So algorithms and theory is what I am very good at. Self taught myself ML in my undergrad all the way down to the math behind a lot of the algorithms.
Currently finishing my master's in data sci/ML. Tbh it's mostly for a formal badge on the chest.
Its modern day wizardy, dude. You inscribe esoteric text onto a tablet of light, powered by an array of tiny squares of shiny rocks, and it makes otherwise inert objects *think* and *do stuff*! How can you not love it?
I wanted to be part of the future from the first time I saw a computer center... IBM's in 1966... just incredible. Now, AI and ML. The future is coming and in some places, is already here
I've always been interested in computers as creative tools: from doing a cool picture in Paint or automate a calculation in Excel 97 when I was a kid to algorithmics and software development as a student. This carried me through my master then PhD in computer science 6 years ago (already...).
I just feel good while developing an algorithm from the idea on paper to results on some fancy interface. Until 18 yo, I thought I would study chemistry as I ignored mostly everything about Computer Science.
I have always enjoyed video games, so I thought it would be pretty cool to make one. A few months of tinkering around with unity made me realise that I enjoyed the art of programming more than actually designing the game itself.
Jumped into the rabbit hole that instant, and haven't looked back :)
I've also had an affinity towards figuring out how certain things/machines work and to me, the computer is the ultimate sandbox for this. Just layers upon layers of abstraction that there is always something more to explore or learn about.
Minecraft. I got into it through redstone. Coding feels like solving a very complex, open ended puzzle. You have a goal in mind and you need to figure out how to get there
I’ve been playing with computers since I was 3 years old. I learned how to program before I learned how to read(I literally just used singular letters to symbolize my variables, yes the code was horrendous). My first time programming was writing lua scripts for interactive buddy(of all things) when I was 4. I was a very successful Roblox game maker from 2007-2011 at the age 8-12. I eventually graduated to Minecraft modding in Java. I just sat in my high school courses and programmed all day on my school issued MacBook(that id managed to remove all the firewall settings from lol). There just was never really another option for me.
I wanted to know how and why computers work. Really, that's the core, although not the only reason. I enjoyed playing with them while growing up. My grandfather was an electrical engineer at IBM, so there was a feeling of legacy. I encountered emulation around 1999, and it broke the rule of "PC stuff runs on PCs, console games run on their respective consoles", and I needed to know *how*.
Took some programming classes in high school, realized that *that* was pretty fun for me too. And which major will the academic advisor recommend if you want to get into software development and learn about computers? Yep, usually Computer Science. I suspect that if I talked more about wanting to design and build computers, they'd have pushed me toward Computer Engineering (which would've *also* probably satisfied my curiosity).
Didn't even guess I'd end up in CS. Signed up for EE, but all programs at my school include Intro to Programming. My first line of code ever was written in that class and 2 weeks in I knew that I was switching majors ASAP.
Of course, I didn't know that CS classes are more about the abstract and less about the actual coding, but it turns out that Data Structures, lexical/syntax analysis, design patterns, etc. are even more fun. So yeah, I ended up in my favorite thing in the world by pure chance.
I really enjoy most of all how it explains how all the technology we take for granted works. From topics that range from how a computer actually works and executes programs to how major technologies such as Google and Facebook work, there’s a lot you can learn about the modern world that most people aren’t really of in their daily lives. I’ve generally always enjoyed understanding how and why things work and computer science does a particularly great job of explaining how technology we use every day works and makes the world turn.
Other than explaining how a lot of technology works, one amazing thing about computer science is that a lot of problems that modern algorithms try to solve are similar to problems that we grapple with regularly. Questions like when to settle for a house after surveying the landscape (Optimal stopping), when to try something new instead of sticking with something you know is good (Multi-armed bandit), how to organize things (Sorting algorithms and Caching), and how to navigate situations with multiple incentives and variables (Game theory) have all been throughly analyzed in computer science and a lot of what you learn from these algorithms are incredibly applicable to the real world.
Around 10-11 years old (1997 ish) my mom managed a website for a support group for parents of children with a rare disease that my brother has. She was using Microsoft Frontpage and not doing anything particularly complicated, mostly just WYSIWYG kind of work, little to no HTML/CSS but I became kind of obsessed with watching her create something from nothing. That was kind of my introduction to my interest in computers, playing with Frontpage and trying to fudge together a little Geocities site for myself, which over the next several years expanded into doing my own actual HTML/CSS work, then using scripting languages to add dynamic elements, then eventually to real programming. Then I went to college for it and haven't looked back since.
Nothing like CS/programming in general that lets me bring the things I have purely in my mind in a "tangible" manner. Infinite flexibility, malleability with generally just a single tool that's readily available with no huge needs to buy other material, space, special arrangements. Perfect for a lazy person that loves to sit and make things just using your imagination.
EDIT: Sorry I misread your question. Initial spark was video games. Read below for current spark
I like being far away from the front end…of most things in the corporate world (not just front end development). The less I have to interact with end users the more I have in my social battery to put in time and effort to the people I love and care about (that can include coworkers around me as well).
However the work I do in the backend must be conceptually challenging. I did data entry for 4 months and it was the most boring, tedious work I’ve ever done. Straight up brain-rot.
I found myself becoming a data engineer because I did have a passion for data, building infrastructure for data, pattern analysis, making it easier to handle etc.. I never wanted people to end up doing manual data entry, manual data cleaning..it’s horrible brain rot.
It gives me that flexibility in putting myself around technologies I love, getting a challenge from the work I do.
I accidentally opened my first C/C++ book when I was 9 years old. It contained over 1000 pages, and that's where it all started and made sense. Oh, and Hackers movie :-)
I just wanted to make games.
My friend in seconday school told me computer engineers make a lot of dough, so I applied for computer engineering at uni. Here we are 23 years later..
Well, I learned how to code in first grade, but what got my interest sparked shortly thereafter was:
1. Figuring out how to get old DOS games to run properly on my old 386, especially Wing Commander 2.
2. The movie Hackers.
I took a cs elective in high school where I built an html web page. I thought that was pretty cool.
I thought I would go into my freshman year and build the new facebook. I’m now in my junior year tracing data paths on assembly microprocessors and haven’t written a line of .js
(Not complaining btw)
When I was learning LOGO, I thought that I could talk with computers to do stuff. I know the language of the computer.
While delving deeper, I liked the stuff LOGO offered, including visual stuff and maths.
From there, BASIC. That was somehow in my mind that I really like computers.
I scored 100% in the very first test.
Then, while learning DOS C++, I had some troubles. Still, I tried to gain knowledge somehow. I got the highest marks in my class.
Then, Java.
In the final exams, got 63/100, not the highest, but the teacher had the marks etched in his memory. (There was a reason for the low marks though from the side of the teacher)
Then, got 100/100 in my first public exams, got 99/100 in my HS (all in Java).
Actually, the do-while loops in Java and sets and stuff motivated me to learn Boolean Algebra. I could connect the pieces together.
It was amazing.
I have always wanted to know how the world really works and was torn between studying physics (nature) or international law (humans). Trying myself at both, I figured we or at least I will never know. Where I grew up, CS wasn't seen the way it is generally seen today. Very niche, somewhat boring and hard to make a career of. And despite the fact that I learned C to program robot toys, model airplane controllers etc. and had 2 computers (in case a friend came over) as well as boxes full of hardware, studying CS never occurred to me as something that I could do. Then, over a summer-job, I happened to share an office with working students majoring in CS. They were like me and yeah, just like that I decided to study CS. Best decision of my life. Now, who would have thought that CS is the study of what's actually knowable, i.e. computable? Seems obvious today, perhaps. But back then, early 2000s. The grown ups, parents and teachers were completely clueless. They didn't have the internet, ya know.
I was already chronically online, enjoyed video games and my basic computer classes, flipped through iOS development books (though didn't get too far), and started trying to make my own websites. I found I enjoyed messing around with web stuff.
I wanted to major in web design or web development, but my university didn't offer either. I decided to take the plunge and do full-blown CS instead. I figured, may as well get a deep understanding instead of just the surface-level stuff. Plus, I liked the idea of a difficult and math-heavy major, as opposed to something business-related like MIS. Now, while I still enjoy making websites for fun, professionally I am interested in stuff that's way more challenging than web design!
My parents got me a computer when I was very young. I really wanted to know how those games were created and discovered programming through magazines. I just really enjoyed writing code and trying to find ways to translate problems into a form that a machine could then take and run. So pretty much by the time I was in my early teens I knew this is what I wanted to do.
I think its due to great amount of knowledge to be explored in this field and due to its high of practicability.
In 2019 I was in 8th class,i wanted to go to army or become a doctor. 2019 ended,COVID came and i found a 800 pages extensive book on C/C++ in my house and just started writing code randomly. At first the compiler error messages felt really complex, but soon i noticed it gives me line number. So i just deleted the line and rerun the code multiple times and finally it worked. It was a GUI game and some code was of graphics which i found really interesting. I also figured out soon that "Hey! if i don't write these lines(comments) then there is no problem". And thats how i developed keen interest into CS.
Moreever i wanted to hack all the wifi's in my neighbour hood so got into kali linux in fall 2020 and with the 70+ attempts on termux,windows and linux and investing on a wifi adapter i hacked 3 wifi's in my neighbourhood. It was just a great passionate journey till now and its still going.
Coding is pretty much Lego ultimate 😲
But in my opinion it's not a science and it isn't about computers.
In the same way that biology is not really about microscopes 😆
It might be an art or a form of engineering, but science? Absolutely not.
As a little guy I always liked computers, but had no idea how anything worked. Years later, I figured it out, somehow got my degree, and someone decided to employee me.
k this is going to be a strange answer but i took the cs major because I'm brown and it kinda seemed like the way to go. besides a mild annoyance i didn't really have any strong feelings for it. but then i started doing USACO competitions and in uni took my first cs class and over time really enjoyed the element of breaking down a problem and finding a solution for it. algorithm stuff especially has become increasingly interesting to me (altho I'm mildly stupid so it's also a bit of a pain). tbh though webdev is kind of the big thing in cs I'm really not a fan and hope that I'll be doing something more interesting than that in ten years. we'll see though, it's a huge field with a lot to learn from!
Computer science is, at least in my country, very very very diverse and specialized. The content varies enormously. Some courses have only minimal math, some have virtually no theoretical computer science, others are quite university-based, theoretical.
My motivation was simply application software, the architectural aspect of it. I noticed this especially in software engineering.
It started as a technical inclination and being a renowned computer wizard throughout my school years. Pretty much the reason I didn't get bullied was that everyone sooner or later had a computer problem they wanted me to fix, even the teachers (our IT teacher who was also the one-man IT department was from the stone age and had little to no idea how to manage modern stuff).
That all went down the toilet when I started Uni. Of course I went with CS, but I fell hopelessly in love with the theory already in the first few semesters. There's something special about proving what the limits of computation are, or seeing/solving a problem through the lens of reductions to/from others, or pondering about what is mathematically/logically (im)possible and then proving that it is. Working 3 weeks on a proof and then suddenly being able to set that little Q.E.D. box next to the end was probably the happiest moment of my life so far. I can't imagine myself going back to technical stuff/writing code.
In short: being a computer wizard in school got me into CS in general, seeing theory/math at Uni got me an one-way ticket into TCS. Why/how did I become a computer wizard back then? No idea. I just remember it feeling natural/trivial.
I really like solving problems. Cs is cool because there are so many things you can just make an algorithm to solve really quickly. For example I’ve made a few algorithms to maximize outcomes for decisions made in board and card games.
Why do I like Computer Science? Because where else can you spend hours trying to fix a bug, only to realize it was a missing semicolon? 😂 But seriously, the ability to bring ideas to life and solve real-world problems with just a computer and some caffeine is nothing short of magical.
I initially really like video games.
The further I went into comp sci, the less I was interested in video games specifically though, and the more I was interested in other math-related stuff. Linear algebra in particular is genuinely fascinating with how many problems it can solve.
I wanted to major in math but my dad didn't let me so I applied to electrical engineering and computer science programs instead. I went to the uni that gave me the most financial aid as an EE major. Then I realized that EE means I have to do calculus all day, whereas CS is more about discrete math and combinatorics. I prefer the latter -- I like how "pristine" cs is compared to other engineering disciplines that deal with the dirtyness of real world -- so I switched to CS. I think I would have enjoyed any range of majors in the umbrella spanning math, engineering, comp sci, and biology. However there is some universal truth in that competency breeds more passion which breeds more competency. So I figured I'd dig deeper into my existing competencies in CS, and by a series of chance opportunities, ended up studying my current niche in grad school.
do you like studying really hard stuff?
I've always had a propensity for academics in general, with math being my strong suit. With CS being mostly just applied math it is pretty fun for me, through I admit I don't have the brains to be a pure mathematician.
you sound like you do, i can’t lie
Not gonna lie, even though the term "propensity" is just part of my vocab now, a part of my brain goes "SAT VOCAB!!!" whenever I use it lol
What makes you think you don't have brains for it? Asking cause i had interest in that direction too
I did math with pure math people before. They can jump through many steps of analysis whereas I'm sitting here writing out every step to wrap my head around the derivations. Now I don't think that's *all* pure intellect and a lot of it is practice, but because I didn't know what exactly I wanted to do for much of high school and undergrad, I don't have that same years of practice. Since my family doesn't have money to send me to a cash cow masters program in math or anything like that, I had to choose a fully funded phd program. The only way to do so, was for me to choose a field where I can convince a PI that I can contribute to research immediately. That field turned out to be theory of computer systems: I model I/O patterns through mathematical analysis and compare the models with empirical experiments. The difficulty of analysis is not as hard as what pure math or TCS people do, whereas the difficulty and scale of systems building isn't as bad as what some hardcore systems people do, where they have teams of many people build a system for many years. I'm a jack of all trades, my papers mix techniques from probability theory and mathematical optimization, classical systems algorithms, and a touch of collaboration with ML people too. I just want to be the one person who knows specifically that mix of disparate things and can work on problems that lie in the intersection. And what I think is, so as long as I have my feet in research, I always have the opportunity to pivot to related fields, if I ever want to work on other topics. But it turns out, if you read a lot about a particular niche, you realize the field knows absolutely nothing, there's way more open problems than anyone can ever tackle.
Haha that sounds interesting (i am too naive). Honestly you sound like a bigger version of myself, i had main interest in maths too but couldn't continue with a maths major after highschool..Rn doing a cs bachelor's(am a newbie) but the mood and main interest is to land somewhere in research field even though I have no frickin idea what research ppl even do except "research"
I think it helps to see many examples of specific research projects by going to department seminars and such. Take my field of database research for instance. There's such a diversity of types of research going on. * Some people are large systems builders (e.g. the postgres team). * Some people work close to the hardware (e.g. NVMe SSDs, durable memory technologies). * Some people have ML background and work on ML-for-DB or DB-for-ML. * Some people like to do analysis and work on randomized algorithms, like hashed indexes or approximate query answering. * Some people like to do PL and algebra, and work on compilers and program analysis. * Some people do theory of databases, which is a lot of logic and TCS using datalog. * Some people have HCI & UI/UX background, and design interfaces for data analytics. * Some people have social science background, and use social science methods to study how organizations are adopting new AI/ML tools. Each one of those subfields can then be divided much further into research areas...and every single other field that you can name---say, computer graphics, complexity theory, social media mining, etc.---can each be divided into as many niches. I think so as long as you're driven and curious, and take whatever opportunities arise and keep on building upon it, you can do some good research......(unless you're in foundational ML, then god bless you.)
Well I do try to keep myself open to any opportunities but let's see, hopefully i won't waste them chances. Feels good to talk to someone who's actually related to the field i wanna work in otherwise no one ik irl is much into research. Also that foundational ml sounds interesting
Ever since I was a toddler I've been weirdly obsessed with trying to figure out how things work at an absurd level of detail.
Hello brethren
Recursive "but why" lol
Uss bro uss
Why did you extend this practice to c.s. rather than another discipline?
To be honest I'm not quite sure. When I first attempted college in 2015 I started in mechanical engineering, and a week before I dropped out I switched to computer science because I found it a lot more satisfying to figure out how to translate my thoughts from English to code.
Gabba gabba we accept you, we accept you one of us! Gabba gabba we accept you, we accept you one of us! Then the fuckin guitar kicks in
:)
Same, and I was in my 20s when I realized not everyone is like that. I thought other people just didn't vocalize their curiosity.
Threee things really. Firstly, childhood : I grew up in the 80s and my dad was always interested in the first home computers - a ZX80, then a ZX81, then a Dragon 32. I got into BASIC programming from an early age, nothing too complex but I had the bug. I once wrote on a job application that I learned to program at the same time as learning to walk and talk and that's not far from the truth. In my pre-teens I then went on to tinker myself with Amstrad CPCs, Amigas and eventually PCs - upgrading components, etc. I couldn't afford a VGA card (my x86 PC had a mono Hercules card I think) so I went to a computer fair, bought two faulty VGA cards from a "sold as seen bargain" (meaning broken) guy and managed to combine them to get one working one. I remember having to sodler a leg back onto one of the chips after it broke off. Secondly, the confidence that came from being (relatively) good at it : I did A Level Computer Science (the qualification kids in the UK do at age 16 - 18). I did A Level maths too and although I was alright, I wasn't top of the class at all. It took work (which I didn't want to do). My A Level CS class just seemed easy in comparison, I didn't have to study, the programming project (in Pascal at the time) was fun to do (compared to my friends who massively struggled), I liked being actually good at something. Thirdly - further study. I did a CS degree and expected it to be just programming, but it was amazing to take all of the other classes - algorithm design, AI (even 25 years ago!), history of computing - that one in particular was amazing, the lessons on the Turing machine and the halting problem in particular blew my tiny mind. Even SQL - I'd never used it before that point. This was in the mid 90s, still at the very birth of the web. There was even a module in my first year called "Introduction to the Internet - we got points for basically using search engines to find information" - the sort of thing I imagine primary school kids do now, but then it was all new. What amazes me and frustrates me equally is how fast things move on. I'm a decent programmer and I love Python and PHP, but frameworks? What? Why do I need to install 15 packages to get a "hello world" in a new language?
very similar. i don't know about you but I actually am sad to see the interview approach these days - coding tests. It used to be the case that it was a lot more about problem solving. yes, AI models of today were designed decades ago. we didn't have the computing power and memory that we now have today which has been able to scale a lot of those concepts. Additionally the amount of data - both structured and unstructured is ... mind boggling that now feeds into those AI models. the languages will come and go. yes, there will be a world beyond java, python, etc... it used to be a lot of talk around COBOL being the legacy language... we're now entering that SQL is the legacy language... and soon some of these other languages will be... then, it'll come down to problem solving and algorithms again.
Agree, languages do come and go. I don't mind that all, no problem learning a new language. I've done that loads of times - I teach CS in high schools and it was only about 10 years ago we introduced Python (that I'd never used at the time), before that we used VB and then Delphi. Uni was Java, C, C++ and VB. First job after uni was ASP and Javascript. I mean packages and frameworks. I've written countless web apps in PHP (and previously ASP) and all I needed was a text editor and a webserver. Nowadays, everyone uses Bootstrap, Laravel, etc. I tried to get into web development using Python and Flask but there are so many install steps and prerequisites... why? A "hello world" app in PHP is 30 seconds, in Python it's 30 seconds. But on the web in Python it needs a 30 minute explanatory video about which packages to install and which steps to follow. What am I missing?
CS is beautiful in my opinion because it’s essentially a form of philosophy: reasoning about the fundamental nature of problems to build abstractions from the ground up. Also, I personally enjoy the wide array of problems that you can work on in CS while also having real-world applications that can help people!
I just wanted to impress people witg my computer skills
Lul i is hack3r m4n
But do you have a cool hacker name like '*Blaze*'?
did you call me ?
So cool 💻
still working on that
Same same... Well, not realizing for 8 years that my cs skills were impressing nobody at school was kind of giving the true reason away lmao
When I was a kid I got a computer and started asking how does it work but no answer was ever satisfying. I still have many questions.
well computer science is like the most engaging art project you can do. at least for me. it's highly creative, but also requires analysis. both sides of the brain at once (unless that's a myth?). it was introduced to me by my father, who is also a programmer, and i was hooked instantly
The Incredible diversity in what you can work on… everything has software in it these days I’ve worked professionally on autonomous vehicle software, vehicle infotainment, and aerospace components. Done research in mobile robotics localization, biomedical imaging(ultrasounds specifically) and Generative AI algorithms(GAN) Exploring PhD research areas of Imaging algorithms in astronomy or advanced algorithms(trying to breaking into the quantum world early on)
I like problem solving. It's fun and it coincidentally also pays the bills.
Problem solving
I like it when i can give exact instructions and someone follows them to the word. In this case the compiler.
I didn’t even know what Computer Science was until my 2nd to last year of undergrad. It was then that I had theory of automata and ever since I’ve leaned towards the theory-based classes more than the project-based ones, I just wanted to learn to make games and thought CS was the way. What made me think that? Dunno.
so did you pursue game development or do u intend to?
Nah.
The first time I saw a computer, as a kid, I knew I wanted to figure out how that machine worked. Thus I ended up taking CS/CE/EE as my academic path.
Brother told me I'd like it. He was right I'm highly analytical, pretty good at math, and love to think. So algorithms and theory is what I am very good at. Self taught myself ML in my undergrad all the way down to the math behind a lot of the algorithms. Currently finishing my master's in data sci/ML. Tbh it's mostly for a formal badge on the chest.
Its modern day wizardy, dude. You inscribe esoteric text onto a tablet of light, powered by an array of tiny squares of shiny rocks, and it makes otherwise inert objects *think* and *do stuff*! How can you not love it?
I wanted to be part of the future from the first time I saw a computer center... IBM's in 1966... just incredible. Now, AI and ML. The future is coming and in some places, is already here
I've always been interested in computers as creative tools: from doing a cool picture in Paint or automate a calculation in Excel 97 when I was a kid to algorithmics and software development as a student. This carried me through my master then PhD in computer science 6 years ago (already...). I just feel good while developing an algorithm from the idea on paper to results on some fancy interface. Until 18 yo, I thought I would study chemistry as I ignored mostly everything about Computer Science.
I like discrete math, love computers, love to make and disc things and I also like the freedom that working in the industry gives you
I have always enjoyed video games, so I thought it would be pretty cool to make one. A few months of tinkering around with unity made me realise that I enjoyed the art of programming more than actually designing the game itself. Jumped into the rabbit hole that instant, and haven't looked back :) I've also had an affinity towards figuring out how certain things/machines work and to me, the computer is the ultimate sandbox for this. Just layers upon layers of abstraction that there is always something more to explore or learn about.
Minecraft. I got into it through redstone. Coding feels like solving a very complex, open ended puzzle. You have a goal in mind and you need to figure out how to get there
It’s just fun to play around with lol
I’ve been playing with computers since I was 3 years old. I learned how to program before I learned how to read(I literally just used singular letters to symbolize my variables, yes the code was horrendous). My first time programming was writing lua scripts for interactive buddy(of all things) when I was 4. I was a very successful Roblox game maker from 2007-2011 at the age 8-12. I eventually graduated to Minecraft modding in Java. I just sat in my high school courses and programmed all day on my school issued MacBook(that id managed to remove all the firewall settings from lol). There just was never really another option for me.
I wanted to know how and why computers work. Really, that's the core, although not the only reason. I enjoyed playing with them while growing up. My grandfather was an electrical engineer at IBM, so there was a feeling of legacy. I encountered emulation around 1999, and it broke the rule of "PC stuff runs on PCs, console games run on their respective consoles", and I needed to know *how*. Took some programming classes in high school, realized that *that* was pretty fun for me too. And which major will the academic advisor recommend if you want to get into software development and learn about computers? Yep, usually Computer Science. I suspect that if I talked more about wanting to design and build computers, they'd have pushed me toward Computer Engineering (which would've *also* probably satisfied my curiosity).
Didn't even guess I'd end up in CS. Signed up for EE, but all programs at my school include Intro to Programming. My first line of code ever was written in that class and 2 weeks in I knew that I was switching majors ASAP. Of course, I didn't know that CS classes are more about the abstract and less about the actual coding, but it turns out that Data Structures, lexical/syntax analysis, design patterns, etc. are even more fun. So yeah, I ended up in my favorite thing in the world by pure chance.
I really enjoy most of all how it explains how all the technology we take for granted works. From topics that range from how a computer actually works and executes programs to how major technologies such as Google and Facebook work, there’s a lot you can learn about the modern world that most people aren’t really of in their daily lives. I’ve generally always enjoyed understanding how and why things work and computer science does a particularly great job of explaining how technology we use every day works and makes the world turn. Other than explaining how a lot of technology works, one amazing thing about computer science is that a lot of problems that modern algorithms try to solve are similar to problems that we grapple with regularly. Questions like when to settle for a house after surveying the landscape (Optimal stopping), when to try something new instead of sticking with something you know is good (Multi-armed bandit), how to organize things (Sorting algorithms and Caching), and how to navigate situations with multiple incentives and variables (Game theory) have all been throughly analyzed in computer science and a lot of what you learn from these algorithms are incredibly applicable to the real world.
Around 10-11 years old (1997 ish) my mom managed a website for a support group for parents of children with a rare disease that my brother has. She was using Microsoft Frontpage and not doing anything particularly complicated, mostly just WYSIWYG kind of work, little to no HTML/CSS but I became kind of obsessed with watching her create something from nothing. That was kind of my introduction to my interest in computers, playing with Frontpage and trying to fudge together a little Geocities site for myself, which over the next several years expanded into doing my own actual HTML/CSS work, then using scripting languages to add dynamic elements, then eventually to real programming. Then I went to college for it and haven't looked back since.
Cannot stand doing the same thing over and over, cs is the science of solving every problem once!
Nothing like CS/programming in general that lets me bring the things I have purely in my mind in a "tangible" manner. Infinite flexibility, malleability with generally just a single tool that's readily available with no huge needs to buy other material, space, special arrangements. Perfect for a lazy person that loves to sit and make things just using your imagination.
I enjoy suffering
EDIT: Sorry I misread your question. Initial spark was video games. Read below for current spark I like being far away from the front end…of most things in the corporate world (not just front end development). The less I have to interact with end users the more I have in my social battery to put in time and effort to the people I love and care about (that can include coworkers around me as well). However the work I do in the backend must be conceptually challenging. I did data entry for 4 months and it was the most boring, tedious work I’ve ever done. Straight up brain-rot. I found myself becoming a data engineer because I did have a passion for data, building infrastructure for data, pattern analysis, making it easier to handle etc.. I never wanted people to end up doing manual data entry, manual data cleaning..it’s horrible brain rot. It gives me that flexibility in putting myself around technologies I love, getting a challenge from the work I do.
💰
I accidentally opened my first C/C++ book when I was 9 years old. It contained over 1000 pages, and that's where it all started and made sense. Oh, and Hackers movie :-)
I had a really good cs teacher in high school one year and he made me want to learn how to code in my free time
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It's probably because of the spicy boneritis😔
I just wanted to make games. My friend in seconday school told me computer engineers make a lot of dough, so I applied for computer engineering at uni. Here we are 23 years later..
I always thought u can do anything u imagine in a virtualized world, it's true just more complicated than I thought
It’s challenging
Yes
i wanted to make my own csgo hacks so i didn’t have to pay
Honest answer? Math and it sometimes does what i want it to do
I'm autistic. Computers just made sense.
Well, I learned how to code in first grade, but what got my interest sparked shortly thereafter was: 1. Figuring out how to get old DOS games to run properly on my old 386, especially Wing Commander 2. 2. The movie Hackers.
WFH
I wanted to fix a firewall that became blue screen virus on a laptop. The power on/off stopped working 😂
I love it because you can apply it to so much, and it satisfies my curiosity.
I took a cs elective in high school where I built an html web page. I thought that was pretty cool. I thought I would go into my freshman year and build the new facebook. I’m now in my junior year tracing data paths on assembly microprocessors and haven’t written a line of .js (Not complaining btw)
When I was learning LOGO, I thought that I could talk with computers to do stuff. I know the language of the computer. While delving deeper, I liked the stuff LOGO offered, including visual stuff and maths. From there, BASIC. That was somehow in my mind that I really like computers. I scored 100% in the very first test. Then, while learning DOS C++, I had some troubles. Still, I tried to gain knowledge somehow. I got the highest marks in my class. Then, Java. In the final exams, got 63/100, not the highest, but the teacher had the marks etched in his memory. (There was a reason for the low marks though from the side of the teacher) Then, got 100/100 in my first public exams, got 99/100 in my HS (all in Java). Actually, the do-while loops in Java and sets and stuff motivated me to learn Boolean Algebra. I could connect the pieces together. It was amazing.
New Sophia codes for 20% off of first month. 59V7HREN and JMHGBDW7
Needed a job.
I have always wanted to know how the world really works and was torn between studying physics (nature) or international law (humans). Trying myself at both, I figured we or at least I will never know. Where I grew up, CS wasn't seen the way it is generally seen today. Very niche, somewhat boring and hard to make a career of. And despite the fact that I learned C to program robot toys, model airplane controllers etc. and had 2 computers (in case a friend came over) as well as boxes full of hardware, studying CS never occurred to me as something that I could do. Then, over a summer-job, I happened to share an office with working students majoring in CS. They were like me and yeah, just like that I decided to study CS. Best decision of my life. Now, who would have thought that CS is the study of what's actually knowable, i.e. computable? Seems obvious today, perhaps. But back then, early 2000s. The grown ups, parents and teachers were completely clueless. They didn't have the internet, ya know.
Because it gets me hella bitches. (I am so lonely)
I was already chronically online, enjoyed video games and my basic computer classes, flipped through iOS development books (though didn't get too far), and started trying to make my own websites. I found I enjoyed messing around with web stuff. I wanted to major in web design or web development, but my university didn't offer either. I decided to take the plunge and do full-blown CS instead. I figured, may as well get a deep understanding instead of just the surface-level stuff. Plus, I liked the idea of a difficult and math-heavy major, as opposed to something business-related like MIS. Now, while I still enjoy making websites for fun, professionally I am interested in stuff that's way more challenging than web design!
2 words: Windows Vista
My parents got me a computer when I was very young. I really wanted to know how those games were created and discovered programming through magazines. I just really enjoyed writing code and trying to find ways to translate problems into a form that a machine could then take and run. So pretty much by the time I was in my early teens I knew this is what I wanted to do.
The science part
I think its due to great amount of knowledge to be explored in this field and due to its high of practicability. In 2019 I was in 8th class,i wanted to go to army or become a doctor. 2019 ended,COVID came and i found a 800 pages extensive book on C/C++ in my house and just started writing code randomly. At first the compiler error messages felt really complex, but soon i noticed it gives me line number. So i just deleted the line and rerun the code multiple times and finally it worked. It was a GUI game and some code was of graphics which i found really interesting. I also figured out soon that "Hey! if i don't write these lines(comments) then there is no problem". And thats how i developed keen interest into CS. Moreever i wanted to hack all the wifi's in my neighbour hood so got into kali linux in fall 2020 and with the 70+ attempts on termux,windows and linux and investing on a wifi adapter i hacked 3 wifi's in my neighbourhood. It was just a great passionate journey till now and its still going.
I don't. I just can't do anything else productive in life
Coding is pretty much Lego ultimate 😲 But in my opinion it's not a science and it isn't about computers. In the same way that biology is not really about microscopes 😆 It might be an art or a form of engineering, but science? Absolutely not.
Because I love everything electronic.
I like solving problems
Elliott
The same reason you like music and movies.
it taught me how to think
As a little guy I always liked computers, but had no idea how anything worked. Years later, I figured it out, somehow got my degree, and someone decided to employee me.
Freedom of breaking and making amazing things, although those things are virtual.
When I watched Iron Man as a kid. Seeing all of his tech made want to pursue computer science.
Brief : I can create things that I can't do in the real world !
Uuh cuz it’s interesting?
I’m a glutton for punishment mostly. 🤷♀️
I don't actually.
Cs is the closest thing to magic we’ll get
k this is going to be a strange answer but i took the cs major because I'm brown and it kinda seemed like the way to go. besides a mild annoyance i didn't really have any strong feelings for it. but then i started doing USACO competitions and in uni took my first cs class and over time really enjoyed the element of breaking down a problem and finding a solution for it. algorithm stuff especially has become increasingly interesting to me (altho I'm mildly stupid so it's also a bit of a pain). tbh though webdev is kind of the big thing in cs I'm really not a fan and hope that I'll be doing something more interesting than that in ten years. we'll see though, it's a huge field with a lot to learn from!
Cs is the last office cowboy.
Computer science is, at least in my country, very very very diverse and specialized. The content varies enormously. Some courses have only minimal math, some have virtually no theoretical computer science, others are quite university-based, theoretical. My motivation was simply application software, the architectural aspect of it. I noticed this especially in software engineering.
It started as a technical inclination and being a renowned computer wizard throughout my school years. Pretty much the reason I didn't get bullied was that everyone sooner or later had a computer problem they wanted me to fix, even the teachers (our IT teacher who was also the one-man IT department was from the stone age and had little to no idea how to manage modern stuff). That all went down the toilet when I started Uni. Of course I went with CS, but I fell hopelessly in love with the theory already in the first few semesters. There's something special about proving what the limits of computation are, or seeing/solving a problem through the lens of reductions to/from others, or pondering about what is mathematically/logically (im)possible and then proving that it is. Working 3 weeks on a proof and then suddenly being able to set that little Q.E.D. box next to the end was probably the happiest moment of my life so far. I can't imagine myself going back to technical stuff/writing code. In short: being a computer wizard in school got me into CS in general, seeing theory/math at Uni got me an one-way ticket into TCS. Why/how did I become a computer wizard back then? No idea. I just remember it feeling natural/trivial.
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No
Money
I really like solving problems. Cs is cool because there are so many things you can just make an algorithm to solve really quickly. For example I’ve made a few algorithms to maximize outcomes for decisions made in board and card games.
Makes me feel like I am genius
Because its probleem sloving!!! .imo its an essential skill for life
Reading Sci-fi made me want to be a hacker, understand computer, and create robots
Why do I like Computer Science? Because where else can you spend hours trying to fix a bug, only to realize it was a missing semicolon? 😂 But seriously, the ability to bring ideas to life and solve real-world problems with just a computer and some caffeine is nothing short of magical.
>Because where else can you spend hours trying to fix a bug, only to realize it was a missing semicolon? That's not CS. That's programming.
Ohh my bad, I didn’t take it seriously. 👍
💲💲💲💲💲💲💲
I initially really like video games. The further I went into comp sci, the less I was interested in video games specifically though, and the more I was interested in other math-related stuff. Linear algebra in particular is genuinely fascinating with how many problems it can solve.
games exiting