My Journey

Programming has always been quite a large part of my life. For a while, I never really thought about why. So that’s why I want to take a look back from the start.

The Beginning

I think I’ve always been interested in programming for as long as I could remember. My dad was a software engineer at HP, so if I had to say, my passion probably came from him. It was fun watching him type up copius amounts of code (which he still does), many parts of which I still wouldn’t understand to this day.

Block Coding

Like many others, my first real experience with programming probably came from block coding from sites such as code.org (hour of code) and Scratch. But it’s very common for a good reason. Block coding can easily teach the fundamentals of programming without the difficult learning curve of syntax. I still remember all the puzzles where I had to get my character (like Steve from Minecraft) to move somewhere and do something (like attack with a sword).

Steve from Minecraft

Python

The first actual language I learned was Python on a site called Codecademy. Python was and still is a pretty good choice for beginners, due to its very forgiving syntax (although why would any language use indent as part of its syntax). There are (usually) no annoying methods or functions I need to know to do basic things and a lot of the processes are automatically performed by the compiler. However, due to it being a high-level language, efficiency is a lot lower than other languages. Plus, there was no reason to use its object-orientated programming syntax over other languages like C++ and Java.

C++

C++ was quite a challenge to learn, as it was the first object-orientated language I tried to fully learn (I gave up on Java earlier). Learning how classes and objects operated was quite different from what I normally used in languages like Python, but it was well worth it. Knowing how to use objects and classes can be very powerful, as they basically allow anyone to create their own variable with custom properties. (I also “learned” how to use pointers, which can be its own topic).

C++

Today

Today, I am still code code coding in APCSA, picking up old things and learning new things. I’ve picked Java back up again as the main language we use (more successfully with my knowledge of C++) and I’ve learned how to use sites like GitHub, which can be useful for making huge projects with many collaborators.

Where To?

Obviously, my journey is still ongoing. I still have plans for other avenues, which I’ll probably start working on soon. Even though it’s been a long time since I’ve started programming, I still feel that I barely know anything, which is a good thing. Knowing less means that there’s more to learn. With all the time in the world, I’ll continue to grow as a programmer and maybe make some super cool things.

For now, I’ll just keep working on Java and Github though.