My 5 Years in IT
2015–2016: Bachelor’s Degree, how it all began.
After graduating from high school, I’ve always wanted to get into aviation and aeronautic engineering. But unfortunately, my final grade didn’t give me the chance to get into this field, so for university, I had to choose between Computer Science (CS), Economic Science, and Hydraulic Engineering. I’ve chosen Computer Science because it sounded great to me and I had no idea about what I could do with the others.
That’s how I‘ve started my journey into Computer Science.
I was excited to start, and I remember my first lesson ever was about Codification and Representation of Numbers, which CS is all about. The first thing that surprised me in that lesson, was the addition of 1 to 1 in binary; the result is two (as always) but since two is written as 10 in binary, we get, after summing 1+1 in binary, a digit 0 and a carry of 1. So basically, 1+1 = 0, and since that moment, I was curious to know what’s next in CS, what kind of surprising things I would get to see.
The very first thing I had to know in my first year is that CS is based on mathematics, so I had to take some mathematic courses such as Mathematical Analysis and Algebra. On the programming side, we’ve studied the basics using pseudocode and Pascal language and we were practicing on desktops with C Programming language.
Though I was enjoying my first semester in CS, I never thought it could be hard at the same time and I’ve been through some difficulties to get used to programming. The reason is that it was hard for me to understand Algorithms & Data Structures, which is why I took some additional training at home to study again from scratch.
We’ve started the second semester with new courses, such as an introduction to Object-Oriented Programming using C++, Statistics & Probability, and continuity to Data Structures and mathematic courses. Despite that, the semester was as stressful as the first one, I’ve started step-by-step to be enthusiastic and passionate about CS and doing some programming practices at home during my free time and preparing for the final exam.
The good thing I had in my first year, is the people that I’ve met for the very first time and we’ve built a strong friendship so we could go through hard times and struggles for passing the year by studying and review all our courses outside of university hours. And I will always be grateful for that.
Second-year in CS
After a tough first year, we’ve started the second by digging deeper into Computer Science, and for the first semester, we had to begin with OOP and an introduction to Java Programming Language, Computer Architecture, Data Structures, Mathematical Logic, and Information System.
It was a smooth semester, we’ve started the basics of Java by developing a simple calculator using NetBeans graphical user interface (GUI), personally, I’ve preferred to work more with Eclipse. After completing the calculator, our teacher directly told us: “Okay, time to level-up! Start to develop a game similar to Space Invaders from what we’ve seen so far…” Knowing that what we’ve seen was just creating a simple class with objects and buttons on the GUI. We were all surprised by this request, unfortunately, we had no choice but to start on it as it was included in the semester’s grade. The good thing we were able to acquire from that project, was all the additional knowledge we learn ourselves at home via some YouTube tutorials about adding images, audio, animation, etc.
Other than Java, we carried on with Algorithms & Data Structures by measuring complexity on linked list algorithm and developing a small application that inserts, search, and sort a list using C++.
The second semester was way enriched than the first, as we had an introduction to many great courses like Databases, where we had to write SQL queries on iSQL*Plus, and honestly, I’ve really enjoyed that course as a brilliant young teacher took the responsibility to teach us from a basic until an advanced level. We had also the chance to learn Web Development using HTML, CSS and PHP, an overview about Software Engineering where we got to know about Software Development Life Cycle models such as V-Shaped, Waterfall, Operating System and introduction to Unix commands, and Networking where we learned about IP Addresses, network devices like routers & switches, and finally, Network Analysis using Wireshark on a Linux system.
Overall, the second year was enjoyable where we had to acquire good knowledge in good topics in IT, having a hands-on experience in many technologies, and also it gave us a clear vision about where we would like to specialize for our career and preparing for our graduation project in the third and final year.
In the next chapter, I will discuss my final year in Bachelor’s Degree, where I will cover my experience doing university projects, my membership in a scientific club, and finally about my graduation.
In the meantime, you can follow me on LinkedIn to be updated as soon as my upcoming chapters are out.
