I’m Imran Artwel Jr Mhlanga, a recent graduate from Multimedia University in Malaysia, and here is my story.
I grew up in a disadvantaged neighborhood where people would see running water on their taps once in 3 months. I would wake up around 4 am to go fetch water before I go to school that is if my school fees were paid on time. If you had come to me and tell me that one day, I would study in one of the best universities in Malaysia, I probably would have called Mr. Tumba (our traditional healer) to prepare a concoction for you partly because I did not see myself completing my primary education due to financial problems. At the age of 9, all I ever wanted was to be a pilot but little did I know that things were about to change drastically all because of a little mischief. One sunny afternoon, my mom sent me to buy something for her and along the way I met my friend who invited me to his house to show me this new game he was playing on this mysterious thing called a “computer”. The game was gobman, a clone of Pac-Man, where you had to go around a maze eating dots. I played the game for hours and forgot what I was sent to buy. As expected, I did receive a few lashes but I did not feel any pain because all I could think of was the magic I had just witnessed.
So, my first interaction with a computer was when I played gobman on a windows 2000 computer. Since that day I never wanted to hear about flying planes, rather I wanted to make my own game and give to kids in my neighborhood. When I got a college scholarship, I knew exactly what I wanted to study – Computer Science. I learned C and C++ through tearing every book I could find in the library. My fascination with programming resulted in me receiving a merit scholarship to study in one of the best private universities in Malaysia. This passion carried me through my studies at Multimedia University, where I had access to better and more resources. I began learning new languages, operating systems concepts, data structures, algorithms, and even networking. I went on to win the best academic achievement awards for 3 years consecutively. I enrolled in postgraduate studies just so I can learn more about problem solving and software development.
Now as a recent graduate stepping into the industry, I believe there still more to learn and cool software to build. I never would have imagined that my fascination with gobman would result in me becoming a software developer who is aspiring to change the world with console.log