Helloooo Wisconsin!
It's been a while since my first post, though perhaps not as I had thought.
I expected it to have been like two years ago rather than just one...
though that's likely from being cooped up inside even more than usual due to covid.

I will say though, the first post was written when I was a rising Sophomore,
and now I'm a junior in the midst of all the classwork that I had heard horror
stories about when I had first started here at U of I.

And although people loved to bash these classes for their workload,
I'm very much looking forward to working on the bigger projects these courses entail.

Currently I'm taking ECE 391 -- "Computer Systems Engineering" -- as required by my major (ECE)
in order to graduate. Which isn't to say that I'm not enjoying this class, I'd say I'm particularly
giddy about finally getting to take this course.

Although the content can be rather dense, and our language of choice (AT&T x86) sketchily documented,
programming in assembly is particularly fun to me. Being able to see exactly what my program is executing
without having to wonder what's going on under the hood is very refreshing.
That and it's reminiscent of the Zachtronics games that I would occasionally play in High School.

Considering how much I've been enjoying this course, and the previous computer engineering courses I've taken,
I'm considering what my career path may look like.
I have a friend who's in industry doing web development and he's taken to introducing me to
some web dev technologies that are hot right now (Express, React, etc).
I've been able to make what I'd like to be is a competent website using said tech/libraries/noun
(https://boole215.github.io/mTracker/),
but I can't help but find web development to be kinda boring.
It feels like I'm just plugging and chugging away at React components,
and most of my time is spent modifying the CSS as opposed to doing any 'real' sort of engineering.
No offense to people doing web dev, this is just the extent of my experience.

Being able to take 391 feels like the wind that I've needed in my metaphorical sail,
and it's revived the interest/enthusiasm I had in Embedded Systems.
Though, I'm not entirely sure if that's the field that I would like to work in.
I'd love to work on firmware and other lower level things, but I'm not entirely confident
in my ability to make electrical circuits do what I'd like them to do.
Especially after the semi-fiasco that was my Analog Signal Processing class (ECE 210).

But I digress, it's nice to put my thoughts out on 'paper',
and I'd like to continue doing so. If not for anyone else, than for my own mild 'catharsis'.

Which is to say, this is the end of this post.