The Coolest Parts of Software Engineering
03 Sep 2020Robotics
The driving factor in my decision to pursue a degree in engineering was how much I enjoyed robotics. I was always particularly interested in the software element of robots. Even in elementary school, working with LEGO Mindstorms, I wanted to learn how to program my creations. This curiosity followed me to high school when I became a programmer for my underwater robotics team. Through that experience I learned to program in C and the basics of Arduino microcontrollers. I found that I enjoyed working with both the hardware and software which is why I chose the Computer Engineering major specifically.
Video Games
My first exposure to object oriented programming was through a course I took my sophomore year of college, EE205. The final project for the class was to design a fully functioning text based game. I play video games a lot in my free time so I found this project very interesting. It was also very unique as it allowed me to be more creative in comparison with past engineering coursework. In the future, I would like to learn more about integrating graphics into game development to create a more appealing game.
Web Development
In this day and age, every company, business, and product has its own website. Therefore, I believe that web development is a very useful and lucrative skill to have. I already have a good foundation in object oriented programming with C++ so the next thing I would like to learn to do is to build my own website. I am particularly interested in being able to do backend development as it seems a lot of companies in Hawai’i are looking to hire engineers for that purpose.
Digital Image Processing
I think digital image processing is a very interesting field of study and can have a lot of cool applications. Self driving cars, disease detection, and robot vision are just some examples of projects that are made possible by image processing. In the past, I wanted to program an application to assist you when playing certain video games. However, image processing is integral to my idea and at this time I do not understand enough about the subject to program it. I am currently taking a entry level course on the topic and am hoping to further expand my knowledge of image processing in the future.