I started building electric circuits when I was 14 because I had a small motor break and was able to take it apart and use the enamled copper wire with some double A batteries. I didn't know what I was doing besides having passively watched youtube videos but I began experimenting with things like electromagnets, putting batteries in series and parallel, trying to build a motor, etc. Eventaully my curiosity led me to make things that were more complex like a large capicitor bank and charger, induction heater, rc car, brushless motor. This is what caused me to go into electrical engineering.

Right before I did my first electrical engineering Co-Op I decided that I wanted to start learning AI. I did this because I wanted to understand it and thought the field was growing, this was 10 months before chatgpt. The first time I used python was to run code from an online MIT course going over the basic of AI, specifically the perceptron. I was drawn into the language because of the high level nature of it and because I realized how many cool things I could do with it. This was the start of programming for me.

During my Co-Op almost everything I did that was valuable was software, maintainence or corrective work, projects I was given, and ideas or projects I had were usually software. This experience is what ultimately led me to decide that I wanted to do software. I still have a strong interest in physics and electrical engineering but saw my potential to bring impact in software.

I had also been influinced in that time by books about startups which pushed me to try to work at a startup. I proceeded to get two consecutive jobs at two very small contracting startups. I learned more about working with others, making sustainable code, working with larger projects, and other programming languages. The inherent volatility of the work led me out of that space and where I'm at now.