I graduated from University of California, Irvine in 2002 with a Bachelor's Degree in Information and Computer Science. Later, I received my Master's Degree in Computer Science from California State University, East Bay in 2018.
I was first exposed to programming in high school where I learned BASIC. I remember creating a karaoke program where the song lyrics would be displayed while the program played Aladdin's "A Whole New World" using beeps. It was a fun experience that made me consider majoring in computer science.
Later, during the summer before entering college, my father lent me a Java programming textbook. I learned basic object-oriented programming which helped me tremendously in my first year at UC Irvine.
After graduation, I did odd jobs for a couple of years. Then my life completely changed when I went to Japan to teach English for 3 years. I have always wanted to visit and live in Japan and I also had the opportunity to learn Japanese through immersion.
After returning to the US, I was able to find a programming job. I was doing mostly front-end programming but I also wanted to do back-end. So, I decided to go back to school and try to acquire more skills.