I have been interested in game design since a young age. It started when, like millions of other children, I was enamored by Stampy’s Lovely World. Instantly, I knew that I wanted to be a developer at Mojang Studios, or as I would’ve said then “make Minecraft.” As time passed and my interests grew, I fell in love with The Legend of Zelda series, the Mario Bros. series, and more. This gradually shifted my dream job from being a developer at Mojang, to being an independent game designer, either by myself or with some friends.

    Originally, I wanted to go to college to learn programming, but in eighth grade I was presented with a choice: I could go to my local high school, Apponequet, and take a short programming class there, or I could go to Old Colony RVTHS and take a whole programming course there. My decision was with Old Colony because it gave me more time to learn programming, and thus would give me a chance to better understand the subject, a better chance than Apponequet would have given. College is still an important step I’d like to take. I learned a lot of high level programming in high school, but I want to go deeper. I want to learn assembly and operating system design. I also learned how to read documentation and work with others in this field.

    Now that I’m in Old Colony and taking the programming course every two weeks, I realized how much faster the days go by compared to middle school. I get to school and go to class, then suddenly it’s lunch. After lunch it’s back to class, and now school is out. Even at home I have experiences similar to this. On multiple nights I have started programming a game at 7:00pm, then suddenly I have to force myself to bed because it’s midnight. I would sometimes look at a clock and notice how late it is, thinking that I should go to bed, but instead deciding to finish what I was working on before going to bed. Then I would forget that I was supposed to go to bed and continue working instead.

    Why does programming captivate me, and cause me to lose track of time? It’s simple, programming is a puzzle, and I love puzzles. Each method you make is one small puzzle that is itself a piece to a larger puzzle. You need to figure out what goes where and when things should happen. There is never just one way of doing something, with each and every different solution being useful for various different things. It isn’t easy, choosing what solution to use, or how to implement, it is a challenge but not being so challenging that it becomes frustrating. And the need to adapt if any constraints are added or things don’t work the way you thought they would can add more fun to the challenge. If I ever do get stuck, I can ask my peers if they have a solution. Or, if it’s allowed I can look to an open source project for guidance, properly crediting them of course.