Matt Mauzy, My Love
I started my college career as a Computer Networking student not long after I moved to Missouri. I wanted to by the guy who was crawling around in ceilings and behind walls laying cable and setting up the networks we all use today. Then a little after I got my Associates degree I was bored one day and decided to try something new that would send me down the path that I am on today. That something just happened to be computer programming tutorial in the back of a magazine, it showed how to make a basic calculator in Python.
After that fateful day I have not stopped programming and can’t see myself doing anything else. Growing up I loved art (and I still do), from drawing cartoons to painting and really anything that let me create something. In high school this love took me to classes from Architectural Drafting in AutoCAD to 3D animation in 3Ds Max. It was like there was a gap between these fields that I couldn’t figure out, I loved computers, from taking them apart to troubleshooting problems on my friend’s PCs but I also loved creating art and I just could never find the link. Even with 3D animation I just felt like something was missing and at the time I always thought of computer programming as boring, who would want to just write lines of code all day?
Then I wrote my first program and a light bulb went off in my head and I finally made the connection. Computer programming lets you create whatever you want, from an app to keep my finances straight to a game that includes all the characters I have come up with all those years in my childhood. One thing I love most about this field is it is all about problem solving. They say a degree in Computer Science is just a degree in problem solving and who doesn’t love a good problem?
That is why I love what I love, and that love happens to be Computer Science. Programming is just one part of the whole picture. Throughout this blog series I hope to expand on this love and share with you a little piece of my heart. Being a Computer Scientist to me, means that you are a lifelong learner. This field is always changing and growing, and I am proud to be a part of it and there is no where I would rather be.