CS373 Fall 2019: Nathan Hoang
2 min readSep 1, 2019
- Where did you grow up?
I was born in Austin and have lived in Round Rock (a suburb north of Austin) for my entire life. - What high school did you go to?
I attended Round Rock High School. - What was your favorite extracurricular activity in high school?
My favorite extracurricular in high school was DECA, a business competition club. I enjoyed being able travel with my friends to compete in different cities and states. - Why are you majoring in CS?
I didn’t choose computer science until a week before I submitted my application. I initially wanted to do computer engineering so I could work with software and hardware. However, I ended up changing my major (and my essays) a week before sending my app. Since coming to college, I’ve enjoyed my CS courses, gotten free pizza, and have never looked back. - How much Javascript/Python/Web programming do you already know?
I know a decent amount of React because I did a lot of front-end work at my internship last summer. I’ve used a bit of Python in my personal projects so I know my way around the basic syntax. - Why are you in this class?
The upper division writing flag, things I’ve heard about Professor Downing, and a class time of 11pm greatly attracted me to this class. Also, I want to learn more about software engineering. - How did you like the first lecture?
I enjoyed the first lecture. I paid attention the entire time and did not look at my phone. So relative to some of my other classes I’d say it was pretty interesting. - How did you feel about the cold calling?
Cold calling makes the lectures significantly more engaging. I always imagine what I’d say as a response to the questions, and that makes me think more compared to a traditional class where I’m just absorbing information and not really thinking. Also, it’s fun to see your friends being put on the spot. - What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
Yesterday I just spent eight hours trying to dual boot my new laptop. So for all those who want to dual boot Windows and Linux, make sure your live USB can boot using UEFI (a newer form of BIOS) if your existing boot manager runs UEFI, otherwise it won’t work. This issue cost me 7 of the 8 hours and countless restarts of my laptop because I didn’t know what UEFI and BIOS were.
