• Question: what is it like being a computer scientist

    Asked by fact519pock on 2 Mar 2025. This question was also asked by sept519coss.
    • 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.

    • Photo: Aurelia Brzezowska

      Aurelia Brzezowska answered on 11 Mar 2025:

      In the domain of cybersecurity, a little like this…
      1. Lots of coffee.
      2. Lots of screen-time.
      3. Staring at data to see problems!
      4. Having a Eureka moment because you stared at data so long and found the issue.
      5. Convincing others that the problem exists and is an issue.
      6. Educating others around it and solving the problem to prevent cyber-attacks.
      7. Repeat the cycle.

    • Photo: Caroline Roche

      Caroline Roche answered on 12 May 2025:

      It’s a fantastic career, especially since you are never going to get bored as technology and software is always changing. Plus you have cybersecurity considerations to take into account and looking at how to incorporate or detangle yourself from AI.

    • Photo: Kate Whyles

      Kate Whyles answered on 14 May 2025:

      As a computer scientist specialising in game-based learning, I get to design immersive worlds and engaging challenges that don’t just entertain but actually teach, turning complex subjects into captivating adventures. If you’re passionate about both technology and the transformative potential of education, this field lets you build the future of how we learn.

    • Photo: Ciara Byers

      Ciara Byers answered on 4 Jun 2025:

      I always think of myself more as a “computational physicist” because my PhD is in particle physics, but I guess I still count as a computer scientist! I really enjoy my work, it can be frustrating when you get stuck on a bug in your code, especially if it turns out you made a silly typo somewhere! But I get to research and create really interesting things with my code, I feel like I’m doing something useful as well as getting to find my work interesting!

    • Photo: Sam Brown

      Sam Brown answered on 25 Jun 2025:

      I really love what I do. My teams and I solve issues that are highlighted by the business. We build new and exciting applications and have more recently started using AI tools to help us. No day is the same which is why it is exciting

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