harisrid Tech News

What made you a software engineer? How did you end up in your profession?

Hmmm that’s an excellent question, and it’s something that’s been asked of me a couple of times by friends or by behavioral interviewing. I usually give a short answer, but I think it’s deserved to narrate and tell y’all a good story.

But where do we even begin !!!

Well, we first need to unwind the hands of the metaphorical clock and go back years ago. Harkening back to days past and looking into what I spent my time on as a kid.

I’m visually transported to first grade in Mrs. Knapp’s class, where I’m introduced to a website – CoolMath4Kids ( https://www.coolmath4kids.com/ ) . I was enamored with this! My god, the joy of problem-solving and learning addition and subtraction with single-digit cases ( 9+8 = 17 ) and double-digit cases ( 17+11 = 28 ) . There were three young boys who spent time on the website, and somehow, I was the “ace of my class” ( of 30-kids or so ) :-P. I won a blue ribbon for this, ( as my parents like to praise around ) ! This is the beginning, where a young boy gets introduced to the fascinating world of numbers, patterns, and relationships.

Mathematical thinking and puzzle solving remains a fixed constant ( pun intended 🙂 ! ). It’s fourth grade and I’m learning long division. It’s a summer in fifth grade – back in balmy Bombay, India when the monsoon rains are about to pour down – where he lists out conversions between Fahrenheit and Celsius for numbers from 0 – 100 for Celsius ( formula being F = C * (9 / 5) + 32 ) It’s also the morning bus rides of sixth grade, where I’m devouring my older brother’s pre-algebra textbook notes, learning concepts such as graphical inequalities, the volume of 3-dimension shapes ( A sphere’s volume = 4/3*pi*r^cubed ), and linear equations ( x + 3 = 5, solve for x ) . I place out of pre-algebra and skip right on to algebra.

He spends his time solving puzzles and games for fun. He sometimes sits next to his dad during middle school orchestra practice, where he solves Sudoku problems, spending time filling in the single digits 1-9 in the 9x9x9 square boxes.

He’s also an active participant in his school’s Math24 Competitions. He spends a lot of time practicing and memorizing different combinations for those card decks . He’s spends that time in the backseat of his parent’s car and when he’s at home and doesn’t have much else to do.

Every year – sixth grade, seventh grade, and eight grade – he takes the lead and dominates the competition. He claims his rightful thrown as the first-place winner at both his school level and at his regional county level ( there’s no state level or national level – or maybe there was, but I was blissfully unaware 😛 ). WTG – Way To Go !

Now it’s my first-year of high school, and I get introduced to the world of computer science in a summer school class : Intro to Computer Science. I prep some of the assignments ahead of time, and somehow, things just click and magically fall into place. You can say that the thinking of loops, conditional logic, and variables really fitted well into my abstract reasoning skills. To me, it didn’t require a gargantuan effort to go from x = 3; y = 9; ans = x + y ; print(ans) to recognize the similarities to pre-algebra systems of equations ( the answer is 12 ). From intro to CS, comes other classes like AP Computer Science and a few special offerings from my school.

But what about the other majors? There’s biology and chemistry – which is cool. Hey, science! But there’s not much mathematical thinking there, so it’s out.

Ok, what about English, History. There’s writing and reading. Sure, I love to read and write – in fact, I still miss the feeling of devouring books and reading novels and old literature as a kid. But they are not my “forte skills”. I can give you my SAT scores as evidence ( e.g. my SAT Math being higher than my SAT reading or my SAT writing ), but let me set the record straight : I personally think the SAT, the ACT’s, and most forms of standardized testing are atrocious proxies for intellectual capability. Maybe it’s better that I can just tell you that “I know myself.“

What about finance or economics? Ok, it’s interesting, but there’s not as much mathematical or computational thinking there.

By process of eliminate, the choices become more crystal-clear and better known. Alright, young Hari needs to major in computer science and mathematics and pursue something along those disciplines.

So he heads off the college and takes classes like Discrete Mathematics or Data Structures and Algorithms. He also takes classes like Introduction to Numerical Methods and Physical Simulation – here, he works through challenging modeling and simulation problems to model the movement of entities over time. He also does internships at world-renowned companies for three summers : Intel and Amazon.

And somehow, he ends up spending more and more time nested deep ( pun intended again, IYKYK ) in programming and software engineering.