I wrote my first program when I was nine years old. Using JavaScript and HTML, I built a simple browser calculator. I then began using my newfound skills for evil at school by creating prank JavaScript dialog boxes warning of an “impending virus” that required restarting the computer. My teachers were not amused, and almost banned me from using the computers. The next year I paid my debt to society by helping the school design a website for researching career options.
I entered college as primarily a political science major, but decided to add computer science as a second major since I came in with a lot of credits and had a mild interest in programming. I enjoyed CS much more than I thought it would. It reminded me of chess, where success requires a mix of logic and creativity. I also felt I could have a much greater impact through software, because it scales so quickly. While I stayed with both majors, I gravitated towards CS because I knew technology had the greatest potential to make the world a better place. These days, my interests are heavily into machine learning and artificial intelligence–I find those areas fascinating and fun, and perhaps the area within computer science that has the possibility of doing the greatest good (though cryptography probably meets this criteria as well).
This page was originally a list of software projects I’d worked on, but as of April 2017 I split all non-blog software content into a shiny new software portfolio: www.gautam.software.
Blog Entries Under “Software”
How to Eat Dinner with Barack Obama (February 4, 2013)
Building a Rating System (December 16, 2012)