My path into software engineering.

After graduating high school, I started at UVic as a Computer Science and Music combined major. I didn’t know anything about Computer Science, and it sounded eye-dryingly boring. My plan was to learn to record music so I could start posting more than beats on SoundCloud.

Fundamentals of Programming 1 seemed like it was going to be very tedious. I had to install something called Java on my laptop. For some reason, I couldn’t just use my iPad.

For our first assignment, we had to print out an ASCII picture of a cow.

Not particularly inspiring. But somewhere between the second and third assignment, it started getting interesting. Two of my favorite subjects in high school had been English and Math, and programming was like writing and doing algebra at the same time. Plus, you could make the computer do stuff. It got even more intriguing when I started learning about algorithms and data structures in Fundamentals of Programming 2.

By the end of the year, I was hooked. I switched from the combined major into Computer Science.

Looking ahead to my second year, I had one goal: get a co-op job. If I got a co-op, not only could I write code for good wage, but finally stop working in retail and food service.

The most obvious place to start was web development. So I spent time in the evenings learning the basics of HTML and CSS on CodeAcademy, reading Eloquent Javascript, and attending meetings of the UVic Web Dev club.

There was a good chance I’d be able to find a co-op without leaving the city for the summer. Despite its size, Victoria, BC has a strong tech industry. My first encounter with the local startup scene had been in high school, when I found out a fellow twelfth grader was working for Metalab, a local company. At the time, I didn’t have the slightest idea of what programming was, nor did it interest me. A couple years later, however, I was very interested.

It turned out that one of the students who started the UVic Web Dev club was the brother-in-law of Metalab’s founder, Andrew Wilkinson. Andrew posted on the web dev club’s Facebook page about a free tech event happening in the city:

If Metalab hired high school students, surely they’d hire university co-ops. I tried registering for the event, but it didn’t work. So I emailed Andrew and he got VIATEC to open the event registration because “a bunch of kids from UVIC” wanted to join. At the end of the event, I introduced myself to Andrew and told him I was looking for co-ops in the summer. He was very nice and told me he would put me in contact with People Ops.

I went home and sent a follow-up email:

He referred me to People Ops as promised. It was all going according to plan.

But then I got this email from them:

Gulp.

I’d been warned about this. Companies wanted to see “personal projects.” Proof that you could write code. I didn’t have much proof.

Currently its content is limited. Bless my heart.

It was still too daunting to start my own programming project. Where to begin? I posed this question to a peer of mine who I’d seen showing off his iOS app at the job fair. He said nothing and showed me his laptop, on which he typed “how to build an app” into Google search.

I asked a similar question at a meeting of the UVic Game Development club and the guy leading the meeting explained that you should start with sketches of what the game would look like and go from there. I was too embarrassed to clarify what my question actually meant.

So I directed my energies into my resume. Since I had no personal projects to include, I wrote a section describing my traits:

Doing my best to make my work experience relevant:

Probably referring to my time working in the drive-through at Tim Hortons. Dynamic indeed.

Despite my lack of relevant work experience – or because of it – I filled one and a half pages, doing what I could to sell myself. At the end of my resume, I had a section about my hobbies:

Continued

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