Senior Computer Science students Max Leal, David Geslison, and Zachary Niesporek are currently working to get a foot in the door of the professional computer science world. In part, this means continuing to challenge themselves in computer classes and at UIL competitions, as well as working toward professional certifications and assisting with IT issues on campus.
Geslison and Leal currently take part in a double-block Practicum in Infotech class, in which they gain valuable practical experience troubleshooting technology problems in classrooms. The teachers explain the problem that they are having, and Geslison and Leal diagnose the issue and attempt a solution. If the issue gets too complicated, they return to class to research and talk to their coach for advice, before returning with new ideas.
“It’s usually pretty much the same problems and they’re pretty easy to fix,” Geslison said. “A lot of the time it is pretty easy to just, say, turn it off and on, but then you’ll get hit with the printer not connecting, or having an error, and you’re just like, I don’t even know where to start.”
The abstract nature of computer science is a recurring challenge for the students.. They often struggle to find a starting place when attempting to create code or fix a problem, because there are so many possible variables and very little structure.
“I think it’s kind of like when you’re working with a newborn, you know, [unprogrammed computers] don’t have the knowledge that we have,” Niesporek said. “So you have to be very explicit with what you want [the computers] to do. If you’re too general with it, it’s going to do something completely different, you need to give exact instructions.”
Despite the difficulty associated with the field, each team member has had success in implementing the skills that they have learned for a variety of practical or entertaining projects.
Leal recently developed an app that the track team can use to submit and compile athlete data. He was able to send the app directly to the track coaches, making it possible for them to use it on their own devices.
Niesporek created a text-based video game.
Geslison has developed a number of programs using his preferred software, “Python,” and has fine-tuned a program that allows the user to talk with their computer and receive responses based upon certain parameters that can be coded in.
“What I programmed was a chatbot where you’d actually talk to your computer,” Geslison said. “It would respond from chatting with you with a really good a voice back.”
Due to the relative nascency of computer work as a whole, the field is highly dynamic, and those who hope to develop a career in it must stay up to date on changes, or even preempt the technology.
“I think that the big thing that I’m thinking of right now is AI and how that’s going to influence us,” Leal said. “So I’m trying to get in front of AI as much as possible and try to learn it. I’m learning how the main stuff like chatbot works, and how I can improve on it and make my own.”
Artificial intelligence is widely considered a force that will impact every career field in the present and the future, and computer science especially so.
“I know I get kind of annoyed when people say AI all the time, but it definitely is going to be a part of what we do in the future,” Niesporek said. “So that does threaten a lot of industries, even coding. Overall, I think we’ll still need [coding], but we will be more dependent on [AI] than we were before.”
Geslison shares a similar stance on the prospective impact of artificial intelligence on the field.
“I think that AI is going to be big, but I don’t think it’s going to be taking over programming,” Geslison said. “Because I think it’ll take over the small jobs that people program. You can ask [AI] to write your code and it’ll write you really good code, but you have to know what it’s writing. You have to know how to implement that. You have to know how to splice that. You have to know how to get that working together and everything. You can’t just say copy and paste. It just doesn’t work like that for me.
“But I think that [AI] will be the biggest tool we’ve gotten since the birth of programming. I think it’s going to be a huge help.”
