My inclination, even as a young boy, was always towards building or creating things. That fascination led me to thinking about career choices like becoming an architect, or working in the automobile industry. My choices were quickly squashed when I realised that I lacked the crucial skill of sketching, which was imperative to become a successful architect. And while automobiles were still a passion, it was replaced by computer science when I learnt making websites and building applications.
My name is Suyash Tyagi, and this is my story.
The first chat app that I built was nothing fancy, but I felt so proud of myself for creating something from scratch. I could only imagine what it would feel like to become a good software engineer and building greater and better things. However, I was also aware of the effort that was required to get into IITs, and my lack of dedication to offer. So I chose to be pragmatic and focused on my boards and JEE mains.
I performed decently in both, but I had to choose between getting a decent college with a branch of my choice or a better college in reputation with a branch I was not interested in. That really narrowed down the choices for me — I got my preferred branch in Manipal University Jaipur, and that’s where the world of programming opened up for me.
Until then I was under the impression that I was aware of what was going on in the coding industry, but I was pleasantly overwhelmed with just how much there was to explore and discover. Apart from the many clubs in college, we also had a start-up, Piltover, that hired a select few freshers, trained us, and made us work on actual products. It dealt in prosthetic hand manufacturing, and I was lucky enough to be selected by them. Throughout my first year, I worked in the electrical and myoelectric hand departments, which gave me far better insight into programming than any class could ever do.
Unfortunately, the pandemic brought this to a halt, and I started looking for other avenues to learn and grow from. With a really active community, it didn’t take long for me to be introduced to Scaler Edge. A friend recommended that I attend the 2-day workshop on Machine Learning that was organized by Scaler. I don’t recollect who conducted the workshop, but I do remember being really impressed with it.
A few days later, I was contacted by someone from the institute about the Scaler Edge program. What convinced me about enrolling for the course was that we would be trained by industry professionals, but more importantly, that we would learn about current and relevant topics. And that mattered a great deal to me since I was utterly disappointed with the 30-year-old curriculum that was taught in our colleges. I had seen my father’s textbooks from his engineering days, and those were the same books recommended to us by our professors in our first semester.
Three months into the course, I can gladly state that Scaler Edge is miles ahead of the conventional institutions — not just with the content, but also with the instructors, mentors, and teaching assistants. Kshitij sir and Paridhi ma’am are some of the finest instructors I have ever had. While teaching us the concepts, they also add in invaluable bits of information that only professionals with their level of experience can know.
In one of his lectures, Kshitij sir had told us about the code of conduct that Google has for all its employees. He has been trying to inculcate the same values in us from the beginning, and I truly appreciate him going that extra mile for his students to help us grow into responsible individuals as well as successful programmers.
Every time I get on a call with my teaching assistant, Yash Srivastava, he ends up teaching me some basic practises that make me wonder why I hadn’t learnt it before. A couple of weeks ago we were given 15 problems as home assignments by Scaler. Frankly, I, along with most of my batchmates, were struggling to solve them, so I reached out to Yash sir. When he heard that my method of solving problems was simply thinking about the solution for a few minutes before starting programming, he strongly advised me not to continue that practise.
Instead, he suggested that I spend the first 20-25 minutes writing the solution to the best of my ability, and only start programming once I was satisfied with my logic. Following my method was only going to make me waste my time debugging rather than logic building. It was such a simple lesson, but it was a logical and crucial lesson.
When I was asked to choose my mentor, I chose Sameer Tiwari from Flipkart. He wasn’t from a computer science background, in fact he was an electrical engineer and worked in the same field before improving his skills and transitioning into a software engineer at a well known company. His journey inspired me and I was keen to understand the difference in the hiring processes of other companies and product based companies. Inspired by his journey, I believed that he would be the best person to guide me, and he has done exactly that.
Along with his insights, he also motivates me every time I feel like I am not doing enough, or less than what I should be doing. He calms me down and tells me what I should focus on. He literally keeps from straying too far away from my path, and I am incredibly grateful to him for this and more.
Lastly, I would like to mention the community that I get to be a part of as a Scaler Edge student. My peers at college are less competitive as compared to those at Edge, because most of them are aiming for different things — higher studies, jobs, switching fields and so on. But here, everyone has a common goal, albeit with different approaches to achieve that goal. We share our ideas, views, and opinions, and each one of us benefits from the different perspectives.
Honestly, I wish I had this opportunity of being introduced to the basics of programming much earlier. In fact, I am of the opinion that all of us should be taught about the concepts on a surface level in our schools, so that we can choose if we want to pursue it further and start learning and preparing accordingly.