mixster

Maths had always been my favourite subject at Junior school. There was something so appealing about it's logical nature and how it always made sense, even if I couldn't make sense of it. It dealt with absolute truths. This made computers all the more appealing when I discovered them. Like eloquent maths, computers only dealt with truths. Everything built up from bits – it seemed amazing. My love of maths led to my love of computers and I enjoyed using them together.

When I was twelve, I discovered PHP. My dad worked part-time as a website designer and had a good friend who lent me a PHP programming book. There was something familiar with it. It was as though I was using maths to do things. All those abstract mathematical ideas, like algebra, suddenly slotted in directly to its use.

When fifteen, I discovered Linux. It seemed peculiar. A friends showed me a site where I could download a complete operating system for free as well as having access to a whole host of free programs. It wasn't illegal nor was it hard. Ubuntu was my first dabble in the world of Linux and it led on to Gentoo later on. Gentoo took me through everything. I learnt a bit about most things from boot loaders to window managers. It wasn't easy, as things could very easily go wrong, but I enjoyed it.

At sixteen, I built my first computer. It was a strange feeling to be so scared of messing something up, resulting it wasting a lot of money, yet having fun learning more about how everything fitted together. While not the most complex thing to do, ensuring I had all the required parts, making sure they were compatible, getting the best parts I could while all working to a fairly low budget as far as new computers go. My hard work all paid off though when it booted up.

This all led to my love, fascination and obsession with computers. Still being heavily influenced by the mathematical side of it, it didn't take long for me to discover Alan Turing. To me, his life was amazing, albeit tragically shortened. The Turing Machine is something of immense beauty. To me, he is undoubtedly the biggest influence on our modern lifestyle. One of my highlights in the last few years was Gordon Brown's public apology regarding Alan Turing's treatment in his latter years.

So, this all leads in to why I want to take a computer science course. It's the theoretical and programming side of computers I love – the mathematical side. I can think of nothing I would rather do than to further delve into the intricacies of the computer world.