When coming to UH Manoa, I wasn’t really too sure what field of study that I wanted to pursue. Most of the friends I knew either went into nursing, business or creative media. However, before coming to Manoa, I did go to UH Maui College to finish up some general studies after graduating high school, and it was there when I was exposed to my first software engineering class. Unfortunately, there weren’t really any coding classes that were taught during my time in high school, so my first exposure was a bit interesting. My first couple of ICS classes were a little lackluster, but it wasn’t until later when I saw the true potential of CS. We learned some basics of Java and a program called Alice. But I always found it fascinating and did want to learn more. That is when I decided to go into ICS when coming to Manoa.
At first, I didn’t know how vast the field of computer science was, only being exposed to just a fraction of what it was before Manoa. But what sparked my interest the most was taking Professor Jason Leigh ICS 111 class, where he taught coding through video game making. From then on, I took more of an interest in CS and software development. Thus far, I have taken many other courses, either in C or C++, discrete mathematics, and security, with some not being as fun as others, but extremely important in the field of computer science.
What I hope to gain from not only this course, but many other CS courses is the further my understanding of software engineering. Since there are many different fields of SC and software engineering, I am still wondering which is the right one for me. Currently I am on the Information and Technology track, I feel that there is still so much to learn. One field that I have gotten more of an interest in is security, mainly due to a previous course I took, but hearing within the news of how much ransomware hackings that have been currently happening. I can only hope that I get to at least experience if not all, but most of what software engineering can offer.