My favourite song right now is the opening track on The Waitress musical, "What’s Inside". I’m not sure how she does it, but the way Jessie Mueller explains her relationship with the intangible elements that go into the work that she does is really really cool. I think it has taken on a new meaning now especially because I’ve also been thinking about the processes that go into the making of software on my end. If you were to ask me what was inside something that I built, we would probably have a conversation about some framework (if I used one). Or a new hosting provider that I tried out whilst deploying, or maybe a new build tool that I just put into my developmental process. But I’ve found that every time I’ve made something that I really enjoyed, there’s been heavy context backed by events experienced at that point in time. It’s almost like the initial conversations about frameworks and build tools are sometimes mere maskers for the real ingredients that are sometimes more than words can say.
This realization has also made me worry about whether I really want to major in Computer Science. For the record, I love computers and I always have. There’s this gratifying feeling I get whenever I’m in spaces that talk about these digital machines. Though beyond how this all makes me feel, I’ve realized even more that my ventures into this realm are just my ways of interpreting this world I live in. There’s not a lot I understand about life on this planet, and a lot of what I build is an attempt to gain that understanding. For example, when I was in Year 10, before Chemistry tests I would find a way to weave in what I was learning in class to the web applications that I would play around with in JavaScript. It could have been on anything ranging from the periodic table, stoichiometry or equilibrium systems but the constant thing was that my mind would never stop trying to integrate what was going on in class to the applications I would work on at home. This worked well too, because building things inspired by interdisciplinary topics helped me understand those topics better. A big part of me still strives to replicate this environment: a space where I am consistently driven to use my technical ability to gain greater insight into subject matters or even myself. Perhaps that’s why I spend a lot of my time on Quora or Wikipedia. A lot of the randomized information that I learn from there serves as a good base to build on top of. It makes what I make feel a bit more well-rounded — that process of taking that depth that I’ve managed to understand and putting it into a computer program.
In general, it feels like the global space is saturated with tools that could be doing a better job at solving the problems they intend to solve. A lot of that is probably because we don’t completely understand the complexity of those problems. A part of me hypothesises that overlapping my interests will give me an opportunity to build better software. I just feel like spreading myself out improves the likelihood of me making better things—because “eureka” moments can often come when interlinking conventionally separate concepts.
I’m unsure of what that looks like for my college experience. I’m still incredibly likely to study Computer Science this fall but there’s a lot of thinking I’m trying to do about how I can create an environment where computer science can serve as my interpreter for other key concepts. I need it to be like a tool, a magic wand that takes in foundational knowledge about anything and makes something out of that.
My favourite song right now is the opening track on The Waitress musical, "What’s Inside". I’m not sure how she does it, but the way Jessie Mueller explains her relationship with the intangible elements that go into the work that she does is really really cool. I think it has taken on a new meaning now especially because I’ve also been thinking about the processes that go into the making of software on my end. If you were to ask me what was inside something that I built, we would probably have a conversation about some framework (if I used one). Or a new hosting provider that I tried out whilst deploying, or maybe a new build tool that I just put into my developmental process. But I’ve found that every time I’ve made something that I really enjoyed, there’s been heavy context backed by events experienced at that point in time. It’s almost like the initial conversations about frameworks and build tools are sometimes mere maskers for the real ingredients that are sometimes more than words can say.
This realization has also made me worry about whether I really want to major in Computer Science. For the record, I love computers and I always have. There’s this gratifying feeling I get whenever I’m in spaces that talk about these digital machines. Though beyond how this all makes me feel, I’ve realized even more that my ventures into this realm are just my ways of interpreting this world I live in. There’s not a lot I understand about life on this planet, and a lot of what I build is an attempt to gain that understanding. For example, when I was in Year 10, before Chemistry tests I would find a way to weave in what I was learning in class to the web applications that I would play around with in JavaScript. It could have been on anything ranging from the periodic table, stoichiometry or equilibrium systems but the constant thing was that my mind would never stop trying to integrate what was going on in class to the applications I would work on at home. This worked well too, because building things inspired by interdisciplinary topics helped me understand those topics better. A big part of me still strives to replicate this environment: a space where I am consistently driven to use my technical ability to gain greater insight into subject matters or even myself. Perhaps that’s why I spend a lot of my time on Quora or Wikipedia. A lot of the randomized information that I learn from there serves as a good base to build on top of. It makes what I make feel a bit more well-rounded — that process of taking that depth that I’ve managed to understand and putting it into a computer program.
In general, it feels like the global space is saturated with tools that could be doing a better job at solving the problems they intend to solve. A lot of that is probably because we don’t completely understand the complexity of those problems. A part of me hypothesises that overlapping my interests will give me an opportunity to build better software. I just feel like spreading myself out improves the likelihood of me making better things—because “eureka” moments can often come when interlinking conventionally separate concepts.
I’m unsure of what that looks like for my college experience. I’m still incredibly likely to study Computer Science this fall but there’s a lot of thinking I’m trying to do about how I can create an environment where computer science can serve as my interpreter for other key concepts. I need it to be like a tool, a magic wand that takes in foundational knowledge about anything and makes something out of that.