--- title: "The Art of Computer Science" description: "My TEDx talk about finding my place in tech, and falling in love with programming through art, stupid side projects and friends." url: https://www.joekarlsson.com/talks/the-art-of-computer-science/ --- ![Signac's pointillist painting of a woman at her easel](https://www.joekarlsson.com/images/blog/the-art-of-computer-science/thumb-89672fd2.still.webp) # The Art of Computer Science Sep 10, 2020 · 4 min read · [Career](https://www.joekarlsson.com/blog/category/career/) **TL;DR** I switched to computer science because I was afraid of not finding a job, and it took me six or seven more years to fall in love with programming. Art, stupid projects and a community of friends got me there. Find your community, find your joy, and build stuff for fun. Have you ever watched a tech talk where the speaker says they’ve been programming since they were four? That isn’t my story, and I think it’s harmful for any of us to believe you have to be a prodigy to belong in tech. This is my TEDx talk about how I finally found my love of programming through art, comedy and friends. ## What the talk covers **Getting the obvious out of the way.** Yes, I’m another cis white man in tech, and I have a lot of privilege in this industry. Your experience may not look like mine, and I still want this talk to show you that you can succeed in tech. **College.** I started school in 2008, right as the economy crashed, and studied physics, sociology, art history and a little math. I didn’t switch to computer science until my junior year, and I did it out of fear: I was afraid I wouldn’t get a job after I graduated. I wasn’t good at it and didn’t particularly care about it. I felt a lot of shame about that for a while. I don’t anymore, because you don’t have to start out in love with programming to end up loving it. **Early career.** My first programming job was Microsoft consulting during the Ballmer years, back when that wasn’t cool. I was making money and paying off my student loans, but I felt like I was going through the motions. Without a community or any motivation to get good at it, I didn’t grow much. **Hawaii.** I moved to Honolulu with the clear intention of giving up programming forever and becoming a surf bum. Instead I started hanging out with the local surfer, hacker and punk community, and we made stuff together. It turns out I’m not a very good surfer, and I ended up inside programming a lot more than I’d planned. That was the first time I’d built something I cared about, and I’d never had friends who could show me that was possible. **Art and tech.** I think computers and the internet are the artistic medium of our generation, and that space is still wide open. Even more than art and tech, I love stupid stuff and tech: putting computer chips in things they don’t belong in. I co-organized the [Stupid Shit and Terrible Ideas Hackathon](https://www.joekarlsson.com/blog/i-ran-my-first-hackathon-and-so-can-you/), where a group of us built things that shouldn’t be built, with no purpose and no goal. I also built [bechdel.io](https://www.joekarlsson.com/talks/bechdel-io-how-we-used-javascript-to-help-make-film-more-inclusive/) with my sister Laurel. It analyzes movie scripts in bulk to see whether they pass the Bechdel test. **Find your joy and your community.** Art is how I found joy in programming. It doesn’t have to be yours. If you aren’t finding any joy in it, find or create a community of people that helps you find it. It can center on an interest or on an identity: queer groups, nationality, race, whatever it is. In an industry dominated by people who look like me, a space where you feel safe and accepted matters a lot. Hackathons are a good way to start, and a lot of them focus on specific groups and niches. ## The speed round The talk ends with quick advice for people who are new to tech: 1. **Own your career.** You probably won’t land your dream job right away, and that’s fine. Once you’re in, decide where you want to be promoted, which companies you want to work for and which tech stacks you want to use. If you don’t own that conversation, someone else will make those decisions for you. 2. **Programming is hard.** When I started, I felt like an idiot daily, and I still do sometimes. Most of it isn’t hard math. Understanding how all the pieces fit together is the hard part, and it takes time. You’ll get it. 3. **The best programming language doesn’t matter.** Devs love to fight about the stupidest stuff: PC vs. Mac, cloud vs. on-prem, JavaScript vs. Python. The best tools are the ones that solve your problem and the ones you know best. 4. **There’s no secret to being an amazing engineer.** You work hard, keep learning and get used to feeling uncomfortable. Frameworks are hot, then they’re not, and everything changes every couple of years. 5. **Build stuff and have fun.** I need fun projects, or I don’t care enough to finish them. You don’t have to monetize every side project, and it doesn’t have to be perfect or shippable. ## Where I’ve given it I first gave this as the keynote at PennApps XXI in September 2020, then recorded it for TEDxYouth@LakeManalapan in March 2021. TEDx posted that version in October 2021. Other recordings: - [The 2020 keynote version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtduE9IHDS0) ## Slides and resources - [Slides from the keynote on Speaker Deck](https://speakerdeck.com/joekarlsson/keynote-the-art-of-computer-science) - [bechdel.io](https://bechdel.joekarlsson.com/) - [How bechdel.io works](https://www.joekarlsson.com/talks/bechdel-io-how-we-used-javascript-to-help-make-film-more-inclusive/) - [I Ran My First Hackathon, and So Can You!](https://www.joekarlsson.com/blog/i-ran-my-first-hackathon-and-so-can-you/) - [My top resources for learning how to code](https://www.joekarlsson.com/blog/my-top-resources-for-learning-how-to-code/) ![Joe Karlsson at his desk, chin on hand, with a microphone in front of him](https://www.joekarlsson.com/images/about/collage/studio.webp) Joe Karlsson I write about my homelab, AI tools, databases, and the weird stuff I build on the side. [More about me →](https://www.joekarlsson.com/about/) [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/joekarlsson.com) · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/joekarlsson/) · [GitHub](https://github.com/JoeKarlsson)