Keaton Wong

Why I Code

15 Sep 2022

Riot Games Logo

How it Started

I’m not sure what really sparked my interest in coding. I took AP Computer Science in high school, and I really liked the class and did very well in it, but I don’t think I had something that I wanted to do in the world yet. I just found the things we did in that class really fun, and I was unsure of what to major in before taking it, so that’s when I decided to become a CS major. Becoming a grey hat never interested me much - at least not enough for me to actually start looking into it - but there’s always been one thing that I probably couldn’t live without: video games.

My Passion

I can’t remember a time where I didn’t love video games. My earliest memories of video games are watching my friends play on their iPhones in elementary school, and playing Pokémon, Age of Empires, Mario Party, and many other games with my brothers on our Gameboy Advance and Nintendo DSL. I’m not sure when, but at some point I realized that I could make my passion into a career. I’d probably be happy to work on a variety of games, since I had a lot of fun with my RPG project in my AP Computer Science class, even though it didn’t have any images, just plain text.

I made new friends when I got to high school (I went to a different one than most of my middle school friends) and they got me into League of Legends, which has a website dedicated to following the professional competitive scene, at LoL Esports. I use it all the time to watch my favorite teams play, and since I’ve used it so much, I’ve found things that I would like to be different on the site. This is when I first began to think about working on websites and UI. Over the years, my time spent playing the game has been transformed into watching professional games, and the thoughts in my head have transformed from “I think it’d be awesome to contribute to the game I play so often!” to “I think it’d be awesome if I could make the changes I want on a website I use so often!” Of course, I’d definitely still love to contribute to the game directly as well.

There are a few other games I enjoy very much, and my desire to contribute to League of Legends also applies to these games. Currently, my goal is simply to contribute to any of the games I love, whether it be by working on the game itself, or working on their websites. This goal will likely broaden little by little as I learn more about the world of coding, and I’m happy that I think that’s a good thing. This is why I code.