You had me at Hello World!! A Software love affair
From a very young age, it was clear that my mind was one of an inquisitive and naturally curious engineer. What kind of engineer? It was yet to be seen. From building a doghouse from wood pallets, it looked to be Civil, to taking apart a radio and PS2 console, it looked to be electronics and that seemed to be the theme throughout high school and college with my highest grades coming from the subject Design Technology: Electronics.
This theme carried on to university where I studied Electronics. For the longest of times, it seemed I had found my passion, what I’m good at. That was until the Computer Modelling software module, where I had my first exposure to programming and wrote my first script, the well-known “Hello World”, that this Electronic engineer “destiny” started to be in doubt. The weeks and months following I felt myself falling more and more in love with software. I had always loved electronics, but with the possibilities in software, software just became that much more attractive to me.
I was, however, reluctant to just let go of electronics, there was history there and couldn’t just turn my back on it.
I went down the route of integrating the two together, using software to control hardware components, and even communicate with such components with feedback loops and even sensors. In fact, my dissertation was a home security system that was programmed to control and communicate with REED switches, IR sensors, motors, magnetic door locks and even utilized RFID cards and sensors. So, to me at the time this was something amazing.
However, this project seemed to be the nail in the coffin for my relationship with electronics, but a wedding ring for my marriage with software. For all my experience with software, it had only been c++ and c# using Arduino Boards. For the Home Security system, I used a Raspberry Pi board which uses Python language. I found python even easier than c++ and c# which then sealed the deal for me and software.
The love of electronics however doesn’t die easy, not without a fight. I decided to go do a masters’ degree in mechatronics, which not only did it mix electronics and software, it then included mechanics, which all in all is a niche engineering field. Yet again, the mistress, software, showed up again even more irresistible than ever. The majority of projects seemed to still include a significant amount of software in it and my love and proficiency in it grew while the love for pure electronics faded away.
Electronics though wasn’t giving up just yet. Upon graduating, I secured a graduate job as Signalling Engineer in the railways following which I then became a Project Engineer. All in all, it was about 4 years in the railway sector in signaling, which is essentially electronics and electrical heavy in railways with no aspect of software or coding at all. So, for a while, it seemed the love affair with Software was over, professionally at least as I still had an Arduino board and Raspberry Pi board which I still played with in my spare time.
Nothing, however, could quell the burning desire for software and in 2019, it could not be contained anymore, and I left a position where I was comfortable and an industry I’m very knowledgeable about. I took a shot in the dark and took on a role as a Junior Software Developer and ten months in, I regret nothing. Yes, it’s tough, software as a hobby and software as a job and career are two different things but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Each challenge I face, I always come out the other side wiser than before.
Who knows what the future holds, maybe electronics is not done yet. I will be honest and say I do miss it at times. I have hope that I can bring my two loves together in the aerospace industry, programming the code for flight systems, who knows, maybe mechanics might then join the picture and I can finally use my master’s degree to the fullest and be a Mechatronic Engineer.
