Download From Middle School to Computer Science: A Personal Journey of Learning and Discovery and more Essays (high school) English in PDF only on Docsity! Khan 1 Noah Khan Ms. Taylor DE College Composition 10 October 2018 Taking the Plunge into Computer Science Computer science is the study of processing information with computers. In recent years, this has led to the field growing vast and diverse, employing millions worldwise in sectors ranging from manufacturing to banking. Most of these jobs tend to deal with making algorithms (a set of rules to be followed by a machine) that solve certain problems in the field. Some examples include making software to make factory machines autonomous or designing encryption networks (a network that enciphers data) for cybersecurity companies. My first steps into the world of computer science began in middle school. I attended a summer camp where we learned the Scratch programming language to command pre-existing bots to draw something or execute a command. Years later, I am now learning the language of Python for my science research project. This project is all about coding a neural network, an algorithm that makes computers learn, to identify aquatic invasive species like the Northern Snakehead in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. To achieve this goal, I have to learn much more than the basics of Python; I also have to learn a few specific commands to use in Tensorflow (a software library for data programming). Some of these lines of code are associated with importing data from the computer, while others are used to train the network itself (Kumar). After a period of training, ranging between 1-2 hours, the network is able to identify a picture with an accuracy of about 90%. This is a lot of information to process and due to my lack of experience in programming, I was left dumbfounded. Khan 2 To overcome my inexperience, I decided to talk to a couple of people who are involved in computer science. The first is my friend Brendan, who is 6 footish, has short brown hair, pale skin, a friendly demeanor, and the programming lead of our Robotics Team. The other is my maternal aunt, Faria, who is barely 5 feet tall, a hairline short of 50 years old, mother of two college-bound kids, and had a career in computer science before switching to a more Project Management Professional (PMP) focused career. As soon as I approached Brendan, he presented some advice ranging from what operating system I should use, to the programming language, and even how to get it set up on the computers. All of this advice really helped start my project from being just an idea to reality. While waiting eons for Python, Tensorflow and programs to install, I couldn’t help but to find out the history of computer science because of my natural curiosity for history. It was interesting to see the evolution of the computer coinciding with the experiences of my aunt and Brendan. Computer science had its humble roots in 1801, where French merchant Joseph Marie Jacquard invented a loom that would punch wooden cards in order to automate the weaving process (Zimmerman). In the coming decades, this technology would expand to new heights not even imagined in 1801. In the 1890’s, when the US government was facing a population explosion, a crisis to quicken the census arose. An American inventor, Herman Hollerith, made another punch card system that calculated the population and saved the government around $5 million a year (Zimmerman). Later in the 1900’s major improvements to the computer were made, starting with Alan Turing’s Turing machine, a symbol analyzing machine, which served as the building block for modern computers (Zimmerman). With the advent of transistors (a device that regulates current in machines), computing became a lot faster and more powerful (Zimmerman). This was the dawn of its status from a workplace item into other markets.
