Meet a Tutor: Melanie Sawyer

Meet a Tutor: Melanie Sawyer

Tell us a little about yourself…

I’m from Boulder, CO, and in addition to programming, I like hiking, skiing, biking, Harry Potter, modular origami, designing fonts, and playing the flute. I also really like drinking smoothies.

When did you first start learning computer science?

I found a “C++ For Dummies” book at a secondhand bookstore in 8th grade and never looked back. (Although in retrospect, I’m not so sure that C++ was the best first language to learn.)

Do you have any favorite programs or projects that you’ve built?

I made a 3D Space Simulator using Processing (my favorite programming language ever!). I used the NASA Stars/Planets database to import all sorts of cool information about 42 celestial objects, and I also loaded super high resolution surface maps to make the simulation extra-real (You can check out my project on my GitHub page, melaniesawyer).

I also made a Karnaugh Map generator applet, which turned out to be a really bad idea since I literally had to copy out 16 arrays of possible logic functions. (This is why you should think about whether or not an algorithm is actually optimized for a computer before programming it!)

How would you like to use computer science and programming in the future?

I’m really interested in artificial intelligence and machine learning, but my ultimate goal is to be a software engineer at Google.

Fun facts about you?

I stabbed my eye with scissors when I was four, and as a result my eye changed color. Turns out some traumatic injuries have plus sides!

Favorite ice cream flavor?

Pistachio, of course.

Words of advice for the next generation of coders?

Don’t spend too much time on uninteresting things. The field of computer science is so large that you’ll miss out on really interesting topics if you try to learn everything. It’s ok to not like a certain language, or a certain concept. Gravitate towards the fun stuff :)