You have not misread the title. Former Software engineer is right.
First a little history, and how I came into Software Engineering.
At the age of 11, one afternoon when my family and I were on our way home, we spotted a garage sale, and we decided to stop and take a look. My parents had found nothing interesting, but I had my eyes set on a computer. There it was, a sign for a computer for sale. The price tag on it was $300 dollars. I asked my parents, begged in fact, to get the computer. They gave in, and bought it for me. The machine came with the lovely windows 3.1, and thats about all the stats I can remember. At the time though I had no idea, how to use a computer, in fact in our house we never had one, so for us, it was our first
I think I must have visited every single folder that existed on that computer, as I was always trying out new things, and trying to learn how it worked. Anyways, at the age of 13 I eventually upgraded, and we bought an HP computer, which came with windows 98. What an upgrade huh? From windows 3.1 to 98! At the age of 13, I learned how to build my first website, at the time I was in 5th grade.
My first real programing language that I learned would have to be visual basic, and that was in my freshman year of high school.
In the visual basic class, a class of about 25 students, I was one of only two freshmen in the class. It was me and Jonathan B. The rest of my classmates were mainly juniors and seniors. Where I sat, there was no one next to my right, but there were 3 seniors to my left. Our seats were against the wall. The 3 guys were all originally from Turkey, and would often speak in Turkish amongst each other. The two guys to the left of me were real nice guys, the 3rd guy from me was not, he was a pretty angry individual. I suppose he felt threatened that I was freshman, in a class of mainly upper classmen.
The visual basic class, was my favorite class of the day! The book was quite good, it had alot of examples, and exercises to do. Most of the time in class, the teacher would assign exercises, and we would be required to do them, and hand them in for a grade.
I remember, my first semester grade, I received a 72. Which is not good! The teacher, talked to me, and said that I need to pick it up she said that falling behind early is bad, because the material just gets harder, and is nearly impossible to catch up.
After she said that, is when I really got on my game, and started doing well. It was like a light bulb clicked and I started understanding all the concepts. And any new programing concepts we learned, I would pick it up and understand it like a breeze. Slowly, I was starting to become recognized in the class as one of the best programmers in the class. I went from zero to hero!
Still though, that did catch the attention of the kid to the left of me, since he had fallen extremely behind, for alot of assignments, he would literally beg me to give him my code so that he could copy it and get a good grade. I hated this, because I had spent alot of time coding my program. I suppose when you work hard on something, you don’t want to just give it away, I certainly felt cheated. If you are wondering… yes I did wind up giving him alot of solutions to the problems, after all I was a freshman, and he was a senior….
Sophomore year of high school, I wanted to take C++, and there too, I would excel, except this time, right from the beginning. I wound up with a 100% by the end of the year. Still though….. as my bad luck would have it….. I sat next to a bad kid again. And he also begged and pleaded me to give him the solutions. Yes I hated it giving out my solutions, but me being the nice guy that I am, I couldn’t find a way to say no.
Junior year of High school I would tackle Java, and as you might have imagined, I breezed through that too, and wound up receiving a 100% for the class. And yes… I had bad luck there too, doh!
Senior year of High school, I wound up taking Advanced Java, there were only 7 students in the class. To get in the class itself, if you applied for the class, you had to be signed off the by the professor. So the 7 people in the class, was the creme of the crop. For the most part, the best programmers of my high school, were all in one class. Most of these guys were pretty smart, and also had other high level classes. I did not get a 100, but it did not matter really, I learned alot from the class, and learned how to be an even better programmer. As a final project, I coded the card game of spades, with AI computer players. The game had a very clean and presentable gui.
Before applying for college, naturally I had always wanted to become a software engineer, or something that was in the computer field. Many people though advised me not to do software engineering, they had said that outsourcing of programmers to India, and many other problems would come to play. Not only that, most people suggested that I should try to become a doctor, or maybe even an a lawyer, so that I could become a wealthy man. They almost had me, until my physics teacher in high school recommended that I go into software engineering, and that he saw I alot of future in me. In the end I stuck to my heart, and went into software engineering, and began attending college at Penn State.
Freshman year of college, I really learned nothing new. My first programing course that I was required to take was Introduction to C++. To be quite honest with you, I was bored out of my mind in the class, because I actually wanted to learn something new! Isn’t that crazy?
The first part of sophomore year would be the same ordeal, as far as my computer classes, I did not learn much nothing new. My high school had offered some great courses and I thank the teacher there for being an awesome teacher!
It was during the summer, after Freshman year, that I got into being an internet entrepreneur. It began with my parents seeking for some extra income, and they surfed the internet for a program or business they could get into. It was from there, that I learned that you could actually make money online.
I had always built websites, like I said, and I coded my first html page when I was 13 years old. But never did I try to make money off them.
So turn, to current day, why former software engineering?
Well, while it may come as a shock to some of you that are reading this. But I have decided to change my major to finance.
Yes, I do love computers with a passion, I do enjoy coding and tweaking the computers, but for me Software Engineering at the moment I feel it more to be a hobby, than a career.
I see alot more potential in the future being a finance major.
Yes, I could very well, graduate being a software engineering, but I don’t see a long term future for it. I see a more long term future for Finance. After all, the world revolves around money, and the key to being financially successful in life is to be able to know how to handle money properly.
If I am in a finance major, I can learn about how money works, the right way, and I can surround myself with successful businessmen. Where as, if I am in software engineering, I will always just be that. I will most likely be in the dark about money. Even though computers are in heavy demand, and Software Engineering is hot right now, it may not be the hot thing in the next 30 years.
With the finance route I will have many more options, in comparisons to software engineering. Still though, it doesn’t mean I will forget about computers. Computers will be a hobby of mine, and I will still be passionate about them.
Having learned all that I know about programing, and computers is not a loss. With the strong background in computers, it will be make be an even more desirable employer and not to mention that English is actually my second spoken language!
What is a Finance Major?
Finance focuses on how individuals and business organizations raise money and capital, and how those resources are allocated among competing investment and consumption opportunities. The field focuses on domestic and international financial economies and the role of financial markets and institutions key in the movement of savings and investment capital from lenders to borrowers. It also deals with how individuals and corporate managers evaluate alternative investment and savings opportunities and how they choose among various financial instruments.
I probably did not do a good job of explaining why I feel going into Finance is the better route for me, but feel free to leave any questions or comments, I will try my best to answer them, and be glad to reply to any comments!
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hi jean,
I enjoy reading your child hood experience
My mother also want me to become a doctor hehe
Good to hear that you know what best for your future
I was just the opposite. I was 29 before I started programming professionally. Before that I did logistics and management, which I didn’t like much although that’s what got me into programming. Now I’ve been doing programming for 20 years but I’m having to find something new to fall back on due to age discrimination.
On my programming blog I wrote an article a few months ago about should a young person in high school or college today consider a career in programming. My answer was a qualified no.
Had a strange background too. Entered into college as a Management Information Systems major, left with a BA in English and MIS as a minor. Right now, working as an engineer. Guess it’s just where ever opportunities appear and to jump at them. Never bad to have various forms of experience.
I think I’m going for a finance major now….
First of all, found your site thanks to Entrecard. I found out about it about a week ago, and I decided to sign up today, and click on the first Entrecard I found….
I was going for 2 engineering degrees, Manufacturing and Industial, dropped school to start my own business, and I decided to go back to school about a month ago, but for a different major, Business, but after reading your description I am going to seriously consider Finance…
Thanks,
You’ve got one more RSS subscriber. I might write you a review to get one in return.
Thanks!