What I hope to learn in CS3216

Hello everyone!

My name is Jun Kai, some calls me Jay. I am a rising year 4 business student and I am out of my mind.

Out of my mind? Lets start from the beginning.

Every since I was in primary school, I was sort of interested in entrepreneurship. I remember haggling with retail shop aunties/uncles to buy hip and cool items during those days and flip them over to my class mates for a profit. Remember those country flags eraser that we used to collect? How bout the limited edition pokemon cards? I would convince my friends that these are the most “rare” ones that are hard to find. It is not until later on in life that I understood the proper term for what I did, “economies of scale” and “marketing”. I love what I did so much that even till recently, I am still doing it. Of course, I only trade items that I am intimately in love with. I bought a bunch of ipads, iphones and nexus 7 from USA and sell them in Singapore when they were not available. The money was fantastic, however it felt like something was missing.

In order to find out what that something was, I exposed myself to groups and activities that would allow me to explore other aspect of the world. I was the President of NUS Entrepreneurship Society and was involved in spearheading several entrepreneurial activities both global and local. I travelled to different parts of the world to meet people from different culture and I was interested in what they did for a living, what they eat for lunch and how people in that culture creates value for their community. I went for a one year internship on the NUS Overseas College(NOC) Program and spend a year picking brains with students from Ivy league University of Pennsylvania and Wharton. I was fortunate to intern at a high technology startup company and picked up skills ranging from modifying hardware PCB to creating high fidelity mockup of mobile and web applications. It is also during this time I grew interested in creating technology that works! My friends and I took part in Start-Up@Singapore while we were overseas and we were fortunate to enter into the semi-final round. I knew after this 1 year what I wanted to do. I wanted to be involved in creating value for people through technology in a startup environment.

In order to do that, I needed the skills and to understand more about technology and the people who create it. Thus when a friend introduced CS3216 to me, I was immediately excited before I plunged into a huge dilemma. I had zero programming knowledge and even though I knew how to use web and mobile application, my knowledge of developing applications is non-existence. Everybody says CS3216 is a tough programming course, the thought of drowning in the sea of codes started to engulf me. Nonetheless, I knew that it was something I dearly need to do. With my background and experience, I would like to be more involved with the business aspect of a technology startup and in order to do that, I need to have an understanding of how the developers who painstakingly write each line of code thinks and function. I also need to have a good grasp of what makes the technology behind the fancy consumer user interface front ticks. This is why, I am willing to take the leap of faith and take a challenging programing module with zero programming knowledge.

My peers think that I am out of my mind, but I know that this is exactly what I want.