• Question: what is it like being a computer scientist

    Asked by fact519pock on 2 Mar 2025.
    • Photo: Chris Heunen

      Chris Heunen answered on 2 Mar 2025:

      It is quite exciting! There are lots of new developments all the time, and they have a huge impact on society. In practice, my job is quite flexible: I can do things the way I want them when I want to, as long as they get done. A lot of it means talking to people to work things through together.

    • Photo: Kate Belson

      Kate Belson answered on 4 Mar 2025:

      I really enjoy it! You get to solve all sorts of problems, and it can be a fun challenge. It’s also really rewarding when you get it right. There’s lots of different opportunities in lots of areas, and new and exciting developments are happening all the time. You get the chance to work on brand new technology, which is so exciting.

    • Photo: Marcus Davage

      Marcus Davage answered on 5 Mar 2025: last edited 6 Mar 2025 11:23

      Programming (or rather, bug-fixing) is like a murder mystery, where you’re the investigator, and you build a profile of the killer, his method, his habits, picking up clues, and then, at the end, finding out that the killer was you all along.

    • Photo: Sally Kentfield

      Sally Kentfield answered on 6 Mar 2025:

      I get given a question to try and answer (for example: “How many people played the game each day over the last month?”), and I go on a scavenger hunt in the telemetry database to find data to answer the question. I use my creative skills to display the data in a report or dashboard in a way that is easy to understand, and makes sense. People take a look at the report or dashboard and give me their feedback. Then I can iterate to improve and make things better.

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