It was in the summer when the school announced the long-awaited holidays, of which I always enjoyed spending time mostly playing video games and reading the Tinkle comic books. Out of the excitement, I moved from my home to my uncle’s for a stay and there it was, a Computer with internet access. It was in a small room and in those days having access to the internet was considered a boon(At least for me)! Just as any kid would, I turned my attention in searching for those Miniclip Games, and suddenly, a thought crossed over my mind that completed changed the course of my life.

The Hit

I have had my dinner and as I was going through the large catalog of these mini-games over at Miniclip, I began to wonder, “How in the world are these games made?”. I still remember that I have searched for “How to make games” over at YouTube back in those days when the YT UI was much less bloated(I am sure, if you search for the same query, you’d get a billion different results now). There it was with a rather absurd title that I found interesting, like a video that changes your life, it appeared for good. A single video, that I would credit my entire passion towards learning Computer Science is this:

Apple, Steve Jobs, Code

Everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer.. Because it teaches you how to think. — Steve Jobs

Boy, I was a fan of Steve Jobs back in the day. And the quote “Think Different” always hit me deep and drove me to think out of the box. This video that you see above is solely responsible for what I am today. If the neurons in my brain didn’t send a signal down my spine right through my fingers that lay on the mouse to click that video, maybe, today I’d be hating literally about anything that is supposed to be worthy of knowledge.

In that video, I saw all these cool-looking people who seem to be very smart but laying out that “Anyone can code, with basic arithmetic and logic with a pinch of passion” really meant something to me. As the name of the channel goes, I went on to Code.org to see if I can learn to code, too. Back in the day, there was a single game on their website wherein I had to write “moves”(in programming, these are the functions that are called upon the dog object) to make a dog move and eat the food upon a grid — And I found it surprisingly gratifying to see the dog move based off on my commands.

Education, Learning and, Polymath

Like that, I started to look into these programming tutorials. Then I started to wonder, what is it that drives these people in doing all this? Where does the passion come from? Out of frustration, I again searched “How to learn anything?”(Typed this by merely underestimating my capabilities that I cannot learn anything). An then I saw another one. For the aspiring polymath that I have become today, I credit all of it to this video again:

This video above completely blew my mind. It changed the way I think about education, knowledge in general. There were times when I was afraid and stayed back at school because I failed in all the subjects and that I would upset my Mom that I wasn’t to the standards that were set forth upon me. But this video made me rethink my 15 years of schooling. If there was one person that I am very much indebted to, it’s Sal Khan. I searched and learned about Trigonometry, Algebra, Physics, and Chemistry from KhanAcademy and I genuinely felt his explanations were so much better than anything I ever heard from teachers in 15 years. his video on Euler’s Identity still gives me chills.

If this does not blow your mind, you have no emotion.

The excitement that this man has, his story of how he struggled to get into college to learn, and how he started Khan Academy, and everything about him planted a passion in the core of my heart that is still burning and will forever.

And there it is, that’s where I started to appreciate the beauty of Math, Science and the first program that I ever wrote was to draw a circle on the canvas using JavaScript that I have learned from the curriculum available at Khan Academy. It again made me feel like I possess superpowers!

Soon, I started watching programming tutorials and as always, the legend himself Bucky started a new series with his sweet sense of humor and taught me to program in C. Today, I contribute to his Open Source website. What goes around, surely, does come around.

Python, ML, and Data Science

Like that, a few years have gone by and I had to join college. I took Computer Science and Engineering and in my Freshmen year, and I started learning Python on my own using the Offical Documentation and reading a few books. I got along with it pretty quickly because I really understood the Programming Constructs after I have learned to code a bit JavaScript and C. Later, I enrolled in the Machine Learning course taught by Stanford University professor Andrew Ng over at Coursera. I went about learning the fundamentals there, and started working on projects, gained hands of experience working for a couple of start-ups, freelancing and, learning every day.

Today

I learn every day. You can too. Just a pinch of that passion needs to be planted like how it happened to me 7 years ago. I walk the street and try to contemplate the nature of reality, link the mind-bending ideas of Mathematics, Philosophy, and Computer Science to this motherly nature as a computational stimulation of its own, or is it? As I’ve had a lesson inside my shoulder, I picked up an Anatomy book from a library and learned the basics of the shoulder region. Or ponder about how the spiritual self relates to the mathematical axioms that form the constructive base of consciousness. I have found myself happy learning about literally anything that crosses my mind. You, should not stop until you find that which drives you crazy. Until then, I will be your guide in topics that I know a bit about! Keep finding for it, and I am sure, you will find it. And, never forget, “You can learn anything!”.

For Precious, with Patience.