Joseph Hur

I was born in Korea and spent most of my childhood in underdeveloped countries such as the Papua New Guinea and the Philippines. So when I came to the United States in elementary school, I was fascinated by the prevalence of computers and their sheer power. All I thought about was the next time I could go on a computer and start making stick fights using this old program called Scratch. I think it was this stark contrast between being in such underdeveloped countries and coming to the US and seeing all this accessible and cool technology that made me interested in programming and computers in general.

Senior year of high school I had my first computer-related internship, at KAB computers. While the job itself involved little programming, I was able to get a great sense of the type and scope of software various types of businesses need. During that job I shadowed employees as they worked in places like government buildings and large businesses. CSC210 was a course that covered the both the back end and the front end aspects of development, and its final project involved making a website from scratch. My group’s final project was called Smart Scheduler, and was a web app that automated the scheduling of a user’s event. It was a good introduction to the team dynamics of building a website, as well as how different programming let’s say a server versus the user interface.