hdu 過山車_從機械工程師到軟件開發人員

hdu 過山車

There aren't many people out there who grew up dreaming of writing code. I definitely didn't. I wanted to design cars. But somehow I ended up building software.

很少有人夢見編寫代碼。我絕對沒有。我想設計汽車。但是我最終以某種方式開發了軟件。

I used to help my grandpa work on cars in the summer when I was growing up. And I thought one day I'd grow up to be a mechanic like him. But my mom and grandma had different plans.

在我長大的夏天，我曾經幫助爺爺在汽車上工作。我以為有一天我會長大成為像他這樣的機械師。但是我媽媽和奶奶有不同的計劃。

We didn't have money, so they always kept me busy with something. Whether it was volunteering in the community, reading books from the library, or doing homework for "fun", they always had me focused on learning. I think it was mainly to keep me distracted from a lot of the chaos around me.

我們沒有錢，所以他們總是讓我忙于一些事情。無論是在社區中擔任志愿人員，在圖書館讀書還是為“樂趣”做功課，他們總是讓我專注于學習。我認為主要是要讓我從周圍的混亂中分散注意力。

I grew up with my great-grandma, who is the mom I refer to throughout this. My family was all over the place and it wasn't the most stable environment. But with my mom and grandma shielding me from a large amount of that craziness, I was able to pretend to escape into my love for math and experiments.

我與我的曾祖母一起長大，在整個過程中，我都是她的母親。我的家人到處都是，那不是最穩定的環境。但是，由于我的媽媽和奶奶使我免受了如此瘋狂的困擾，我得以假裝逃脫了對數學和實驗的熱愛。

There was one birthday present I remember as my first exposure to anything tech-related. It was a little VTech laptop and I loved that thing. I took it everywhere, playing whatever games were on it.

我記得有一個生日禮物，這是我第一次接觸任何與技術相關的東西。那是一臺小的偉易達筆記本電腦，我很喜歡那個東西。我隨處玩，玩任何游戲。

It stopped working eventually and I tried to go back out and help my grandpa with cars. But my mom didn't want me to because I was a girl. That kind of crushed my little hopes and dreams of becoming a mechanic.

最終它停止了工作，我試圖退出并幫助爺爺開車。但是我媽媽不想要我，因為我是一個女孩。這種壓倒了我成為機械師的小希望和夢想。

There were times I would try to sneak out and work with him, but he knew it would only make my mom mad, so he'd send me back inside.

有時候我會嘗試偷偷溜出去和他一起工作，但是他知道那只會讓我媽媽生氣，所以他會把我送回屋里。

I'd go back in and start thinking of other stuff I could work on inside of the house. Eventually I got good enough to do minor plumbing and electrical work with a lot of tinkering and a lot of luck.

我回去，開始考慮我可以在屋子里做的其他事情。最終，我有足夠的能力去做一些小的水暖工程和電氣工作，但又需要很多修補和運氣。

To this day I still don't understand why mom thought working with electricity was better than working on cars, but she never yielded on that issue.

直到今天，我仍然不明白為什么媽媽認為用電比在汽車上工作要好，但是她從不屈服于這個問題。

從機械師到工程師 (From Mechanic to Engineer)

I still wanted to do something with cars because of how much I enjoyed working on them so I picked the next best thing: designing the cars that mechanics get to work on!

我仍然想對汽車做些事情，因為我喜歡在汽車上做很多事情，所以我選擇了下一個最好的方法：設計可以讓汽車上班的汽車！

That didn't seem like a real job at the time, so I satiated that desire by drawing pictures of concepts I thought were cool. Then I'd try to do some math behind them to see if I could build a prototype out of the junk we had around.

當時那似乎還不是一項真正的工作，所以我通過畫出我認為很酷的概念來滿足了這一愿望。然后，我嘗試在它們后面做一些數學運算，看看是否可以從周圍的垃圾中制造出原型。

Luckily someone saw me doing that and they starting talking about engineering and that they get to design stuff like that. That's when I made up my mind to become a mechanical engineer. I was probably about 13 at the time and things at home were becoming more hectic.

幸運的是，有人看到我這樣做了，他們開始談論工程，然后開始設計類似的東西。那是我下定決心要成為機械工程師的時候。那時我大概13歲，家里的事情變得越來越忙。

機械工程學的動機 (Motivation for Mechanical Engineering)

The immediate family I grew up around was largely elderly people. They had started dying. And that was a lot to handle.

我在附近長大的直系親屬主要是老年人。他們已經快死了。這需要處理很多。

Keep in mind that, by now, my mom was about 87 years old. At the time I kind of thought it was because we didn't have enough money. I learned that engineers make a lot of money, so I doubled down on my decision.

請記住，到目前為止，我媽媽已經約87歲。當時我有點以為是因為我們沒有足夠的錢。我了解到工程師賺了很多錢，所以我加倍做出決定。

At that point, no one in my family had been to college and nobody knew what an engineer actually did. I think my mom thought I was going to drive trains for a while.

那時，我家中沒有人上過大學，沒人知道工程師實際上做了什么。我想我媽媽以為我要開車一段時間。

To be honest, I didn't fully understand what an engineer did until I was almost done with college.

老實說，直到我幾乎完成大學工作，我才完全了解工程師的工作。

From the reading I had done, I just saw you needed to be good at math and science and I loved those things already so it made sense for me to keep going. Then I joined a robotics club in high school and that's where I got my first whiff of code.

從我所做的閱讀中，我剛剛看到您需要精通數學和科學，并且我已經喜歡那些東西，因此繼續前進對我來說很有意義。然后我在高中時加入了一個機器人俱樂部，那是我第一次接觸代碼的地方。

It was amazing getting hardware to respond to my commands from a computer. While it was fun, I still went off to college determined to be the best mechanical engineer, and to go design awesome cars because cars were one of the best parts of my childhood.

使硬件能夠從計算機響應我的命令真是太了不起了。雖然很有趣，但我還是去了決心要成為最好的機械工程師的大學，并去設計了不起的汽車，因為汽車是我童年時期最好的部分之一。

大學時間 (College Time)

There was so much I didn't know about college. I didn't start talking to anyone at school about college until maybe the beginning of senior year of high school.

有這么多，我不知道大學。直到高中高年級開始，我才開始與任何人談論大學。

I knew you had to apply, but I didn't know you had to pay. Until I talked to a guidance counselor, I thought college was just what happened after high school if you wanted to stay in school longer. You just put in your application, get accepted, and go.

我知道您必須申請，但我不知道您必須付款。在我與指導顧問交談之前，我認為大學就是高中畢業后發生的事情，如果您想在學校呆更長的時間。您只需放入您的應用程序，被接受，然后繼續。

The level of absolute emptiness I felt when I first saw how much college cost almost made me give up immediately. We couldn't afford to keep people alive, so where would we get the money for college?

當我第一次看到大學的費用幾乎讓我立即放棄時，我感到絕對的空虛。我們無力維持人們的生命，那么我們從哪里獲得大學的錢呢？

My dad is an army veteran, so he was able to help me use some of his disability benefits and that helped take a bit of the stress off. Thankfully, my counselor taught me about scholarships and a bit about financial aid. By now it was the spring and scholarship deadlines were around the corner.

我父親是一名退伍軍人，因此他能夠幫助我使用一些殘障福利，從而減輕了一些壓力。值得慶幸的是，我的輔導員教給我有關獎學金的知識以及有關經濟援助的知識。現在是春天，獎學金的截止日期迫在眉睫。

After that I spent almost all of my free time search for and applying for any and every scholarship I remotely qualified for. I probably applied for hundreds of scholarships and I was actually able to piece together enough of them to get my first year completely paid for.

在那之后，我幾乎將所有的業余時間都花在尋找和申請我遙不可及的任何獎學金上。我可能申請了數百項獎學金，實際上我能夠將其中的全部拼湊在一起，以使第一年的學費全額支付。

大學時代 (College days)

I went into my freshman year on a mission because I didn't understand anything. I thought that if you took out loans you basically die so I was terrified of them. I didn't even go to the financial aid office my first semester because I was scared of that place.

大一的時候我去執行任務，因為我什么都不懂。我以為，如果您借出貸款，您基本上會死，所以我對他們感到恐懼。我上學期甚至沒有去財政援助辦公室，因為我怕那個地方。

It definitely worked out for the best, because every semester I would spend hours searching for and applying for scholarships. I was able to get through college debt-free doing this. It took a lot of work, but it was some of the best work I had experienced up to that point.

它肯定是最好的，因為每個學期我都會花數小時來尋找和申請獎學金。這樣我就可以免除大學債務。花費了很多工作，但這是我到目前為止所經歷的一些最好的工作。

I joined everything that would let me work with cars – from welding frame joints on the SAE team to designing body panels in SolidWorks. I did undergrad research in aerospace just so I could learn more about aerodynamics and materials to make better cars.

從SAE團隊的車架接頭焊接到SolidWorks中的車身面板設計，我參與了所有使我可以與汽車一起使用的工作。我只是在航空航天領域進行了本科研究，所以我可以學習更多有關空氣動力學和材料的知識，以制造出更好的汽車。

My journey into engineering research started out of both passion and necessity and it was an incredible time. I became a lab rat for years and most of it was hands-on work. We used power tools, created out own bills of materials, and built the things we designed on paper or in SolidWorks.

我從事工程研究的旅程是從熱情和必要性開始的，那是一段令人難以置信的時光。我已經成為實驗老鼠多年了，其中大部分是動手工作。我們使用了電動工具，創建了自己的物料清單，并在紙上或在SolidWorks中構建了我們設計的東西。

大學“分心” (College "Distractions")

By this point I was half-way through sophomore year when I got hit with the first blow. One of my best friends died in a car accident. It hurt, but I was able to kind of "power through" and stay focused. Then the worst, most random news came.

至此，我已經大二了一半，當時我受到了第一擊。我最好的朋友之一死于車禍。這很痛苦，但是我能夠“通過”并保持專注。然后，最糟糕，最隨機的消息傳來了。

My grandpa got diagnosed with cancer, and he was gone in less than 4 months. That shook me to my core.

我的祖父被診斷出患有癌癥，而他在不到四個月的時間內就離開了人世。那使我震驚了。

I considered dropping out several times during this period, but my mom and grandma keep me encouraged. They pushed me when I didn't want to budge.

我曾考慮過在這段時間退學幾次，但我的媽媽和奶奶讓我感到鼓舞。當我不想讓步時，他們推了我。

I was coming home every weekend at this point, so I basically went class, lived in the lab, and took my homework home every weekend. I wanted to help my grandma take care of mom because she was getting older and she couldn't drive anymore. So we teamed up and took care of her.

此時，我每個周末都要回家，所以基本上我上課，住在實驗室里，每個周末都把作業帶回家。我想幫我奶奶照顧媽媽，因為她年紀大了，不能開車了。因此，我們聯手照顧了她。

Throughout all of my home concerns, I still tried to escape into my coursework. Then code started popping up more and more in my assignments. And I took the one class that really shook my confidence in my path that had been so dedicated to cars.

在我所有的家庭問題中，我仍然試圖逃脫自己的課程。然后代碼開始在我的作業中越來越多地彈出。我參加的那一堂課真的讓我對一直專注于汽車的道路充滿信心。

“真實”編碼 ("Real" Coding)

We worked with PIC micro-controllers using C and I was hooked. I loved everything about getting those sensors to work together, and how you could use the data to make real world things happen. That blew my mind, and I started wandering down that path.

我們與使用C的PIC單片機一起工作，我被迷住了。我喜歡使這些傳感器協同工作的一切，以及如何使用數據使現實世界中的事情變為現實。那使我大吃一驚，然后我開始沿著那條路徘徊。

But cars were still in the back of my mind. Cars had always been in my life and they got me through a lot of hard times. So I wasn't ready to imagine doing anything else.

但是汽車仍然在我的腦海中。汽車一直以來都是我的生活，它們使我度過了很多艱難的時期。所以我還沒準備好想做其他的事情。

Ignoring my conflicting feelings, I jumped into a different research project where I could work with micro-controllers. That was my first real departure from the mechanical path. Then I hit a major crossroads when it was time to graduate.

無視我的矛盾情緒，我跳入了一個可以與微控制器一起工作的研究項目。那是我第一次真正脫離機械路線。然后，當我要畢業時，我遇到了一個重要的十字路口。

研究生院 (Grad School)

My mom's health was on a noticeable decline and I wanted to stay close by. So I decided to go to graduate school for mechanical and aerospace engineering. That's when the big switch came.

我媽媽的健康狀況明顯下降，我想待在附近。所以我決定去機械與航空工程研究生院。那是大開關來的時候。

My research ended up focusing on machine learning algorithms on-board an autonomous golf cart. I wrote more code than I ever imagined I would in my life. And I'm not sure if I'll ever write code that complex again.

我的研究最終專注于自主高爾夫球車上的機器學習算法。我編寫的代碼超出了我一生中的想象。而且我不確定是否會再寫那么復雜的代碼。

While I was still working with hardware, my focus shifted to processing all the raw data and writing code that could handle that much information so fast. After spending 16+ hour days coding and still not completely hating it, I knew it was hopeless.

當我仍在使用硬件時，我的工作重點轉移到處理所有原始數據和編寫可以如此快地處理大量信息的代碼。在花了16個小時以上的時間編碼之后，仍然沒有完全討厭它，我知道這是沒有希望的。

It got to the point that the car part of the research didn't matter nearly as much as the beauty of my code. That's where the final difficult decision came.

直截了當地指出，研究的汽車部分并沒有像我的代碼之美那么重要。那就是最終困難的決定來的地方。

I had to decide whether to move – so I could keep working on cool robotics projects – or stay with family and try working as an engineer.

我必須決定是否搬家-這樣我才能繼續從事出色的機器人項目–還是與家人在一起并嘗試以工程師的身份工作。

I made a decision I've never regretted and I stayed with my family. My mom didn't live long enough to see me become a "master" engineer. But I'm glad I was there to share the time with her I had.

我做出了一個我從不后悔的決定，并且和家人在一起。我媽媽活的時間不夠長，看不到我成為一名“總”工程師。但我很高興能在那里與我分享她的時光。

She died a few months before I graduated. And the rest of that semester is still a blur.

我畢業前幾個月她去世了。那學期的其余時間仍然很模糊。

Thankfully throughout all of this I had a very sweet boyfriend, who is now my husband, to attempt to keep me sane.

幸運的是，我有一個非常可愛的男朋友，現在是我的丈夫，試圖讓我保持理智。

從研究生院到工程學 (From Grad School to The Engineering)

So I tried working as a mechanical engineer in oil and gas for a while. My first day, my boss came to show me what I would be doing. He plopped down this grotesquely large stack of oddly sized paper with these technical diagrams on it called P&IDs.

因此，我嘗試了一段時間的石油和天然氣機械工程師工作。我的第一天，老板來告訴我我會做什么。他放下這張奇怪的大紙疊，上面放著這些稱為P＆ID的技術圖表。

Then he sat next to me with a highlighter and showed me how to go through all of the P&IDs and find specific sensors. He gave me a smile and a pat on the back and said, "I've been doing this for 37 years and we haven't changed much yet! You'll get the hang of it."

然后他用熒光筆坐在我旁邊，向我展示了如何瀏覽所有 P＆ID和查找特定傳感器。他笑了笑，拍了拍我的背，說道：“我已經做了37年了，我們還沒有做太多改變！您一定會掌握的。”

I knew that wasn't going to work. I at least wanted to look at a computer pretending to do work. That's when figured I'd try aerospace engineering. I just knew that there would be plenty of opportunities to design things in aerospace.

我知道那是行不通的。我至少想看一臺假裝工作的計算機。那時我就??想嘗試航空航天工程。我只是知道，在航空航天領域會有很多設計機會。

After I got an aerospace job, I was introduced to CATIA V5 – which is considerably less friendly than SolidWorks – but it's an aerospace thing. That's when I found out there still wasn't any design involved!

在獲得航空航天工作之后，我被介紹給CATIA V5(它比SolidWorks友好得多)，但這是航空航天的事情。那時我發現仍然沒有任何設計！

Doing standards and tolerance analyses for FAA compliance was cool for a few months. Sure, getting 800 signatures on an eighth of an inch change on a 2 inch shim was exciting. But it still wasn't what I'd hoped for.

對FAA合規性進行標準和公差分析很酷，幾個月了。當然，在2英寸墊片上八分之一英寸獲得800個簽名非常令人興奮。但這仍然不是我所希望的。

At one point I was working on nacelle analysis in FORTRAN on this super old box monitor computer setup.

有一次，我正在使用這種超級老式的盒式監視器計算機設置在FORTRAN中進行機艙分析。

This is what got me back into code. FORTRAN was so difficult that I started going back to some of the languages I had used before, like C++ and Python. After making a few useful tools for work, I knew software is probably where I should look next.

這就是讓我重新回到代碼中的原因。 FORTRAN非常困難，以至于我開始回到以前使用過的某些語言，例如C ++和Python。在制作了一些有用的工作工具之后，我知道軟件可能是我接下來應該看的地方。

The jobs I had were so far away from cars or design in general that I knew I had to figure out how to get a job where I could write code that didn't have to involve hardware. Engineering didn't turn out to be what I expected, so I had to make that switch happen. That's when I learned about web development.

我所從事的工作與汽車或設計領域相去甚遠，以至于我知道我必須弄清楚如何找到一份工作，在這里我可以編寫不需要硬件的代碼。工程學并沒有達到我的期望，所以我不得不做出這種改變。那是我了解Web開發的時候。

I still didn't want to move, because the husband likes his family and my grandma was all I had left. So I started learning how to make WordPress sites and did a little freelancing to get some experience.

我仍然不想搬家，因為丈夫喜歡他的家人，而我的祖母是我所剩下的。因此，我開始學習如何制作WordPress網站，并做了一些自由職業以獲取一些經驗。

Then I dived into plugin work with PHP, and that made me research more of the free online coding resources. So I started learning more about HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. And the rest is history.

然后，我深入研究了PHP的插件工作，這使我研究了更多的免費在線編碼資源。因此，我開始學習有關HTML，CSS和JavaScript的更多信息。剩下的就是歷史。

Once I had a few projects under my belt, I applied for a software engineering job that still needed some engineering calculations, and that's how I got my first real software job.

一旦完成了一些項目，我就申請了軟件工程工作，該工作仍然需要進行一些工程計算，這就是我獲得第一份真正的軟件工作的方式。

在代碼中成長 (Growing in Code)

After that, I just slowly started improving my skills. I got into the MVC and .NET Core worlds. That was a cool tech stack, but as I learned more about JavaScript and all that I could do with it, I decided to dive deeper into those stacks.

之后，我才慢慢開始提高自己的技能。我進入了MVC和.NET Core世界。那是一個很酷的技術堆棧，但是當我對JavaScript及其所能做的一切有了更多的了解時，我決定更深入地研究這些堆棧。

Then I accidentally ended up working as a consultant. But it was a great experience. I learned everything from front-end, back-end, database, DevOps, mobile, client management, and so much more.

然后我無意間結束了作為顧問的工作。但這是一次很棒的經歷。我從前端，后端，數據庫，DevOps，移動，客戶端管理等中學到了很多東西。

That's where I really had to time to see everything and figure out what I really wanted to do. So I jumped into React and Node, and that's where I'm currently the happiest.

那是我真正必須時間查看所有內容并弄清楚我真正想做什么的地方。所以我跳進了React和Node，那是我目前最幸福的地方。

代碼工程 (Engineering in Code)

One thing I weirdly miss about being in one of the physical engineering worlds is the amount of structure around everything. No matter what you tried to do, there was always standard knowledge that had been established, researched, and tested.

我很想念一個物理工程界的一件事就是圍繞著一切的結構量。無論您嘗試做什么，總會建立，研究和測試標準知識。

Software doesn't have any type of enforcement like mechanical engineering, because most of the stuff we make won't kill anyone if it breaks. So I started taking some of the design principles I had never gotten a chance to apply to cars, and applying them to my personal software projects.

軟件沒有像機械工程那樣的任何類型的強制執行，因為我們制造的大多數東西都不會在破壞時殺死任何人。因此，我開始采用一些從未有過的應用于汽車的設計原則，并將其應用于我的個人軟件項目。

That's when I started finding amazing opportunities. I get to build projects that range from machine learning on the front-end to serverless apps and virtual reality games using the same methods I was taught as an engineer.

從那時起，我開始尋找驚人的機會。我使用與工程師一樣的方法來構建從前端機器學習到無服務器應用程序和虛擬現實游戲的項目。

If you could see some of the ridiculous software equations and constants I've made up over the years, it would make you chuckle.

如果您能看到我多年來編寫的一些荒謬的軟件方程式和常數，那會讓您發笑。

順其自然 (Going With the Flow)

I never started out on this path and didn’t expected to go this far. It kind of happened in a lot of odd ways, just like most people that end up in this field. ?There are battles I fought and won throughout this journey that I’m still recovering from.

我從沒有走過這條路，沒想到會走得那么遠。就像大多數最終進入該領域的人一樣，這發生的方式很奇怪。在整個旅程中，我一直在奮斗并贏得勝利，但仍在恢復中。

Even though software isn't as diverse as it could be, I've never really felt like people were trying to hold me back or pigeon-hole me into a position.

即使軟件沒有像它可能的那樣多樣化，但我從來沒有真正感覺到有人試圖讓我退縮或讓我陷入困境。

This was not the case when I was in traditional engineering. It was such a toxic place for a woman of color. I had people interrogate me on how I had gotten into the facilities for the parts I was responsible for. I had people try to belittle my accomplishments. And I ran into a few people who flat out told me they didn't want someone like me around for long.

當我從事傳統工程學時，情況并非如此。對于有色人種的女人來說，這是一個如此有害的地方。我請人來詢問我如何進入負責的零件的設施。我曾有人試圖貶低我的成就。我遇到了幾個人，他們坦率地告訴我他們不想要像我這樣的人很久了。

Tech has never been that intimidating for me.

科技從來沒有像我這樣嚇人。

One thing I can say is that I've encountered so many friendly and genuinely helpful people over the years, despite the few jerks sprinkled in between them.

我可以說的一件事是，多年來，盡管遇到了一些混蛋，但我遇到了這么多友好而真正有幫助的人。

If you've ever considered switching to anything in tech from an engineering field, just know that there are a bunch of people who will help you at every step.

如果您曾經考慮過從工程領域轉向技術領域的任何事情，那就知道有很多人會在每一步為您提供幫助。