A long time ago, I wanted to tell you this story - how I embarked on the "no return" road of Programmer. About self positioning, about dreams, about reality.

Started Flash animation at the age of 6;
At the age of 10, I wrote the first game in my life, "Beat Mosquitoes";
At the age of 14, I wrote a two-dimensional physics engine for Cat Battle;
At the age of 15, he set up an independent personal website "Sweet House".

I am Xinxin. That year, I was a senior. After learning about the situation, the counselor across the table said, "What kind of computer do girls learn? How good it is to learn mathematics. It's easy to find a job."

Similar scenes are playing out in my growth path. Such a group of people appeared around me. They repeatedly said that learning computers is too tired, and girls' abstract thinking ability is not as good as boys'. Learn something simple to live a comfortable life.

Sometimes, they will ask: "Do you really like computers?"

They didn't know the game design draft I drew on my notebook, the algorithm problem I wrote in the school computer room at night, or the principle of collision detection that I curled up in the bed of the school dormitory at midnight.

With one gender, I want to deny all that I have done.

(Zero)

Many friends are curious about how I became interested in computers. I have always been disobedient, and this is no exception. I started from "stealing teachers".

One day when I was six years old, I accidentally saw my mother using Flash software. She skillfully draws images, adds keyframes, and objects on the screen move, which is very interesting. Later, my mother went out on business, and the computer was still on. When I just "stole the master", I double clicked to open the Flash on the desktop, and I made an animation everywhere.

Then my mother found out. My mother simply taught me what layers are and what components are. So I made an animation called "Star Wars". The background was colorful and several spaceships were fighting each other.

After playing intermittently until the fourth grade of primary school, my mother took a whim to teach me how to make buttons. If you write a few English words, the button will jump to a specific position on the timeline. So I played the first game in my life, "Beat Mosquitoes". A bunch of mosquitoes flew on the screen. Click the mouse to shoot mosquitoes. My mother was stunned, and I only used the instruction she taught to jump the timeline.

Maybe she saw some characteristics in me. One day she came home and told me that she had done something first and then told me. I felt nervous. She said that she had enrolled you in a programming class.

My mother is not very good at programming except for writing buttons (she said she can also write random numbers to roll dice), but she pointed me a direction to try. Later I learned that she wanted to learn computer when she was in college, but she learned something else with the advice of her elders.

I am the continuation of her dream.

(I)

In the children's programming class, I had a good time. My first programming language was Visual Basic. I learned variables and loops, and functions. In each class, the teacher will first demonstrate and write an example, and then the whole class will follow suit.

Once, the teacher said to move the label box from left to right and then to left. She wrote a sentence about "label=label – 800". As a result, when the label box moves to the right of the screen, it immediately moves to the left of the screen. The teacher didn't think of a way at the moment. He told the class to write like this first.

I was unwilling to sit there and think hard. Suddenly, I had an idea. Define a variable to record the moving direction of the label box, and take the negative value of the variable every time it touches the screen edge. The teacher was very surprised to see what I wrote, and told the class how to do it. I stood up and introduced my method with pride and shyness.

There are more than twenty children in the class, four of whom are girls. I never have pressure, because I always do well. Every time before class, the teacher will show you my brain opening program.

Until one day before class, a boy in the class's program was cooler than me, and used the knowledge I didn't know - command line. It turned out that his father was a programmer, and he gave him a small start. Xinxin, just in her early ten years old, is a little jealous.

It was also there that I met Mr. Xu. At that time, he had just finished his freshman year and taught children to write Pascal. He was very conscious in class and said to himself "I will see how to optimize this". I learned the concepts of algorithm and function encapsulation from him, and learned how smart people think about code. At the end of the course, I sent him a greeting card. I never thought that many years later, we would change from teachers and students to colleagues.

(II)

No one at home guides me in programming. I go to the bookstore to read books and learn various languages and technologies by myself. One day in high school, I found a book about Flash game development and couldn't put it down. I realize that I also rely heavily on the unique timeline of Flash to promote the game process, so I intend to write a completely code driven Flash game to deepen my understanding of object-oriented concepts.

What I want to write is a small game similar to Super Mario. Use the direction keys to move the kittens in the map to the next level, to avoid all enemies or shoot bullets to eliminate them. I have not written such a complex game, nor have I been exposed to object-oriented programming concepts, so I wrote a detailed resource list, drew a UML class diagram representing inheritance relationships and variable methods, and formulated a product timeline according to the book.

I went to a boarding school, the kind that doesn't allow computers. My mother asked the teacher to let me use my laptop in the dormitory.

At that time, I didn't have the concept of debugging. I wrote more than 1000 lines of code and wrote a two-dimensional physics engine by hand. Then press the run button and click the error message on the screen. I had to repair it as soon as possible. The first time the game ran, the rendered figure deviated from the actual position, so I had to continue to repair while complaining on Weibo.

I completed it bit by bit according to the product timeline, from June to December. Just as I was about to finish, I found that there was a problem with the collision detection of the game, and I could not find the wrong place. I didn't want to eat or drink. I lay on the bed in my bedroom at night and thought. Suddenly, I had a flash of inspiration. In order not to let the light disturb the rest of my roommates, I finally finished writing this half year long game at midnight with my computer in the quilt.

In addition to writing games, I created a personal website and played games with the help of my friends in senior year. Every evening, my classmates and I spent time in the computer room to write programs. The next morning, before self-study, we quickly made up for the school work. Even the mid-term exam did not have time to review. It can be said that we did not do our jobs properly. The information technology course is not paid much attention to at the primary and middle school students' stage, but who can say clearly what is the real business.

(III)

University has opened a new door for me. I found that the computer field is not entirely programming, and there are many topics waiting for me to explore.

At Washington University in St. Louis, I was first exposed to such rich learning resources and learned some very important abilities. I learned to use Google to search for all the knowledge I wanted to learn, to find the information I needed in the framework's documentation, and to use Stack Overflow and other websites to find solutions to program problems. I study crazily, like a toddler, laughing and running around in the world of computer science.

Having learned a little, I confidently skipped the introductory programming course in the university and went directly to the algorithm class. As a result, the first assignment was not handed in because I was not familiar with version control. In the end, I only got A - for the whole course.

Eager to prove myself, I chose the advanced algorithm class in anger and took classes with graduate and doctoral students. The professor assigns five questions for each assignment, and the whole class has half a month to think about it. The first two students who do it have additional points. The teacher once gave a very difficult question, and the assistant gave a hint, but no student submitted the answer. I thought it over and over and solved it with dynamic programming and multi-dimensional array. The professor was very surprised.

At that time, I was going to transfer to another university. The professor was more surprised when he heard that I was only a sophomore. He wrote a letter to recommend me to other universities.

This course also made me interested in computational theory. There happened to be a professor whose direction was approximate algorithm. I went to his class and learned it very well. When he heard that I wanted to transfer, he encouraged me: "You have done very well in my class. You are a top student, and you deserve top school." I was so moved that I cried all the way home.

Later, when I was admitted to Columbia University, I told the professor the good news in person. He hesitated for a moment and quietly told me that he was going to leave, and that he was going to the university with the first computer department in the United States. At that time, he said that when people went up high, he also persuaded himself.

My college life is burning every second. I sometimes joke that the college is well chosen, and every year it looks like the college entrance examination. And being full and happy is exactly what I want.

(IV)

I have been looking for a long time to position myself. What can I do.

At first, I wanted to play games. I think game production requires a very comprehensive ability, including technology, art, music, psychology, etc., which is very suitable for me to play anything. For this reason, I went to talk with people from Blizzard Company, and I also went to a private party of EA Company. Maybe I don't have the habit of writing cover letters, or my C++learning is average. In short, I haven't been given the opportunity to enter the game industry.

My first job in the United States was as an intern in a bank. I submitted my resume with the mentality of rushing to work as a doctor, and I submitted all the companies I could invest in. My Indian brother questioned me and said, why do you want to come to the bank when there are so many game related projects. I said that game making is also a reflection of programming ability. He just received my resume.

The work of the bank is very complicated, so I was assigned to test the mobile application. I will do the work at hand first. Later, I got the offer of a regular job and planned to take it. My father objected and said, "Do you just want to find a job?"

I continued to look for a job. Just because of my banking experience, the quantitative trading team of Goldman Sachs took a fancy to me and invited me to write models on the trading floor of Wall Street. However, I hesitated because I knew little about finance. I also posted UI/UX and product manager positions, and later found that they had requirements for college majors and work experience. I think I studied computer science, so I should try software engineering. Why do I have to bypass the option of writing code.

On the recommendation of my sister, I attended an interview with Google. In the first round of the algorithm test, I walked around for 15 minutes without thinking. The interviewer said that you have complicated the problem. I looked at the question again and blurted out: "This is too simple!" Fortunately, I wrote the question. In the second round of the exam, I tried to recall the idea of designing UML diagrams six years ago, and answered it.

Teacher Xu, who taught me how to program, graduated from college and later went to the United States. He worked on hard core research and entered Google. However, I stumbled, and unexpectedly became a colleague with Mr. Xu in a foreign country, and the master and apprentice reunited.

(V)

On the way of growing up, I have received many doubts about my ability, some of which directly or indirectly come from my gender.

Gender based stereotypes are the stupidest. When a computer compiles, it only looks at the code regardless of gender. Some people are not as clear as compilers. (In this sentence, it is also valid to change gender to age or education background)

What's scary is that this kind of questioning sometimes internalizes. Research shows that women's self-evaluation is generally lower than the actual situation, and self-confidence can affect a person's objective performance.

I always feel a pressure to do well. Otherwise, someone will say, look, girls can't learn well. For a long time, I tried my best to prove myself, until I heard such a sentence, I was relieved——

There is a "Tiara Syndrome" phenomenon, which says that women generally believe that to achieve a remarkable achievement in their career path, people around them will recognize her professionalism. But this day will never come, because the crown is not given by others, but you should wear it for yourself.

When I heard of the prejudice in high school that "girls' science scores will be overtaken by boys", when I found that computer courses in college were very difficult to learn and different from my imagination, when I did not find a job that completely wrote code for internships, I doubted my ability again and again, and regained courage again and again.

Everyone, regardless of gender, age or educational background, should have equal rights to pursue dreams. I would like to use the words I wrote in Sweet House to thank the mentors and friends I met:

"It turns out that I am not afraid of mediocrity, but I am afraid that my talent will never be revealed and my efforts will not be rewarded. But at least some people are willing to go with me, and some people are willing to guide me, so I can stumble forward. I hope that one day, my skills will be strong and my heart will be strong."

Go forward bravely and never forget the beginning.