As far as I can remember as a little child, I was mesmerized by computer games that my father used to play. Eventually, when I was around 11 years old, I got a computer from my father. This got me into computer games as well as being interested in building computers as my father also did that as a hobby. Learning to build computers from my father as well as playing a lot of computer games eventually got me interested in video game development.
About a year before I got my first computer, I was introduced to a web development class a school was offering over the Summer and it was my first exposure to any form of coding. Going through high school, I got a job and used the money for spending on computer games and buying parts for my first custom computer. When I finally finished building my first computer, I started getting very interested in the hardware for the computer as well as the software. Those interests and my love for computer games got me looking into coding. With my interest in coding, I joined a class in my high school that did various things like web development and designed my first web page from that class. After that class, I took another class that involved using Arduino and creating robots.
As I continue on from high school, I would start to use this program called Discord a lot. A bit after using Discord, I would realize that some servers in Discord would be using something called bots. These bots are usually something designed by other users to bring utility or other uses like auto-moderation to the servers they are in. Seeing that these bots in Discord existed, I wanted to try to make one of my own and so I did. I initially had to research how to create such bots and thankfully starting a bot is not as hard as it seems. This is where my first exposure to JavaScript began and it only fueled my interest in coding. With this interest, I started taking ICS courses where they started with Java, and with the basic experience I obtained, the transition in syntax was not hard and I was able to pick up the language quickly. From there, I started my slow journey in Computer Science.
As I slowly work through the ICS courses, I questioned what I wanted to do exactly. My first thought was I wanted to develop games. Sure enough, that was one of the driving forces for going through the courses. One of the main things that ran through my mind through this time was I want to particularly work on a game engine that game developers use to develop their own games. Learning about the basic processes of game development and game engines through online research, I started getting very interested in software engineering and applying what I can learn from it to creating or improving a game engine. As I am taking a Software Engineering course now, I am hoping that I can develop the core fundamentals into what can be used in game development. I want to build upon my skills in Java and C++ as those are the most commonly used languages for game development, as well as learning other languages as well. This is ideal as you can be more flexible and apply it for different scenarios. This is only just the beginning for me in the path of game development and who knows, maybe I will strive for something more than just game development down the road.