A love letter to computer science
They say that if you pursue something you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. In that case, this must be what it’s like to fall out of love.
I knew I liked coding from the first time I made a webpage. It was simple. On a plain yellow background were the lyrics of Rihanna’s “Take a Bow” in purple Monotype Corsiva with a marqueed title. A long time has passed since then that the marquee tag has already been deprecated.
It wasn’t until high school that I actually fell in love with the subject. More truthfully, I loved someone who did, and through some abstract transitive property, I loved it, too.
The first years were horrible because they were full of typing tests, hardware concepts, and, out of all the programming languages they could introduce first, it had to be Java. Almost everyone in my batch hated it. The only one who seemed to enjoy it was the person who made me realize how far competitiveness and crushes could go.
Half my goal was genuinely learning programming, and the other half was turning it into a topic of mutual interest. It worked, and I became the epitome of infatuation-induced productivity. But I ended up realizing that making pretty websites brought me more dopamine than the dry replies of a cute nerd. All this eventually led to me receiving an excellence award in computer science and a clear choice of college program to take.
College was a test of commitment. It made me question whether my love for computer science was strong enough to pursue it for the rest of my life. Affirmation required effort and negation meant irresolution. I proved it by doing things I’ve never thought of trying before. I became a student assistant, a Public Attorney’s Office intern, an organization chair, and many others. They certainly weren’t easy, but I enjoyed doing them, so I thought that this is something I wouldn’t mind doing for a long time.
I had no way of knowing that the true test would come in the form of two letters: AI. Artificial intelligence came for the love I held sacred. If I knew that one day the computer would learn how to instruct itself, would I bother studying its language? If my enemy was a machine capable of analyzing decades of human knowledge, would I still dedicate years of my life studying to overcome it? If the subject I loved has changed so much, would I still love it anyway?
This is why I say I am falling out of love.
I could not show the child who was once overjoyed by a simple webpage that most websites are now made from recycled purple gradients and rounded borders. I could not let the high schooler who learned through reading countless discussion blogs know that code editors now come with agents that do the coding themselves. I could not tell my college self to choose another program because no matter how hard I try, I’m certain I wouldn’t have changed it anyway.
How could I when college let me meet people who are as passionate, if not more so, than I was with computer science? I even met people who learned it anyway despite struggling or not wanting to at all. Most importantly, I met someone who would always give me a warm hug and remind me that it’s going to be alright despite everything. I had no reason to give it up.
Besides, I could not escape it. It does not matter how many times my mother would scold me about my screen time or how long I would need to search the internet for answers. With or without AI, there would still be computer science. Being a software developer might become different or the tools might become more advanced, but it is still computer science.
Becoming a computer scientist simply went beyond my selfishness. It was no longer about my personal relationship with the subject. It was about what change I could bring to the world that needs technological literacy as much as its advancement. It was about making technology accessible to everyone who needs it and not depriving anyone of their needs because of technology. After all, everyone deserves an equal opportunity to appreciate computer science and all its applications.
The computer science I used to know is no longer the same computer science that exists today and it will continue to change. I may fall out of love, but if there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s not coding, but it’s falling in love again and again.
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Lance S. Rimando, 23, loves computer science and a certain computer scientist.
