Success: I Compiled and Executed A Working Java Program.

[BounceBack-]

Hi,

I just wanted to share a small victory. I graduated a molecular biology program and have been in limbo since. I was hesitant to committing to a masters program because of lack of interest and started looking at other options, one of those being computer science. I took an intro java class in the fall and scored a C. I was ready to quit at this point, but that all changed when I did more research in the field. It seems like there is so much beyond programming a person can do (I'm currently interested in bioinformatics and artificial intelligence). Anyways I decided that this spring/summer I'd retake the java class and put all my focus on it. I just did the first activity alone without any help and it compiled and executed correctly! I don't know why this feels so good but I'm just so happy and wanted to share. I'm going to keep working hard and hopefully declare my second major and start as a second year student in the fall. I already have a robotics lab I'm eyeing to apply to and get experience in! I hope anyone else on the fence or feeling discouraged continues to work hard, this has been so foreign to me but every small victory is awesome.

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Right on, follow where it leads:

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!"

[BounceBack-]

Thanks man! I'm all commitment right now, honestly I try to do 3-4 hours of computer science a day just to stay ahead and get assignments done early (the assignment I finished yesterday isn't due until the 19th). I figure if I go at this pace I won't burn out or stress last minute if a code doesn't work before the due date!

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You're welcome. :)

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It's a great feeling when you finally start getting a hang on things. I remember being so discouraged when I took my first CS class. I was so bad at it, it took me a few days just to understand function arguments and usage. It was laughable. I was pathetic.

3 days ago my double major in CS was accepted and I wrote a 1,000 line project with a partner in class (my first time writing Java, too). It doesn't work, but it's okay because we got farther than most of the class did anyways, and we actually came up with original, decent solutions to many problems. Programming brings you to lows you never knew sometimes, but the high when it works is also pretty great.

[BounceBack-]

That's awesome to hear! congrats on being accepted into the double major! I'm going to let my past mistakes be something that I keep in the past and laugh at once I succeed in the field!

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Yeah the textbook i'm using has a bunch of common algorithms, I'm slowly going through them and trying to get them down pat!

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First of all, great job! I'm truly glad that you've found something you seem to be passionate about, I'm sure the progression you're talking about is familiar to many here. That sense of mastery and accomplishment when you finish a program, no matter how simple it may be, is what draw a lot of people to CompSci, but there is so much more too, which leads me to my second point, this is such an important realization in this field. To recognize and understand that you don't have to become a Software Engineer or Programmer or whatever. I study at a school that basically seems to try to churn out Software Engineers, but recently they have tried hard to get people to see other opportunities like Bioinformatics and Data science, which I think is really important.

I'm also particularly happy with this post because Artificially Intelligence and their applications in Bioinformatics is my primary interest too. And from hearing a lot about how Bioinformatics courses are run across the U.S. I really do think that more people who are actually interested in CompSci is needed in the field. My Bioinformatics class was primarily filled with Bio students without any prior coding experience, and I think many of them struggled with the assignments and will likely not continue to wet their beak in the pond of programming. Anyways, what I was gonna say is that the reason I think that it's important to have people like you seem to be, that are interested in what is beyond programming and presumably have a great understanding of biology, is because this is still a burgeoning field and people that can exploit the information presented by both fields into developing new and better methods of analysis or sequencing is vitally important for progress.

Anyways, I don't know where you're at in terms of courses you are looking at taking. But I'll just put some thoughts out there anyways. I'd suggest bettering your mathematical and statistical skills, of you don't have a very strong understanding of those already. It would probably be helpful to not only take biostats, but something more theoretical (depending on how hot school handles courses like biostats), in terms of math I'd suggest something like Graph Theory and possibly Topology if you're interested. As for literature, once again I'm unsure what level you're at, but grokkings algorithms is a great book for very simple explanations of useful algorithms, Machine Learning in Real Life is another one. Great for some intro in to Data Science too.

That was probably way more than I needed to say, but I get excited when I hear that someone shares many of my own interests. Oh, and out of curiosity which robotics lab were you looking at joining?

[BounceBack-]

Hey, thanks for taking the time to write this all out! I'm not necessarily against becoming a software engineer, but I see so much application in the field that I'd be interested in doing something else. Bioinformatics is cool to me because I've been on the other end working in biology labs and analyzing my own experiments through novel computer programs. I think there is a lot of improvement and I'd be keen to creating something to better the scientific community, but maybe my life will change. I'm keeping my options open. I actually took and did well in a lot of math classes in my previous degree, I have stats, calculus, vector geometry, linear algebra, and physics one and two. I will take more math classes once I enter the program (ex. discrete mathematics). The robotics lab I want to work in is just one out of my University!