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Welcome to the July edition of Superposition Fremont's 2023 Newsletters! As the summer comes to a close, we hope you are having fun while also preparing for the upcoming school year to make it your best yet. In this tech-focused issue, you'll find updates about our team application, advice for coding beginners, information on some fields within or related to computer science, and upcoming scholarship opportunities. Happy reading!

The thought of computer science, or CS, is oftentimes daunting: the career path every parent seems to want their child to pursue, the promise of making six figures immediately out of college, one day landing a job at an esteemed tech company... the list goes on.

As a result, the pressure to understand everything only increases, and the most important part is often ignored: enjoyment. Remember, coding is a process! It’s okay to feel completely clueless, lost, and unsure at first. Nobody, no matter how natural the subject is to them, can learn overnight, or understand every little piece of information right away. 

With how diverse and multi-faceted coding is, basically everyone can find something they like, whether it's algorithmic/competitive programming, web development, data science, or game development. Check out the section on niche fields below!

While programming is often generalized into the field of computer science, the use of code extends to almost all other industries. For those interested in getting started with a programming language, here are resources to break into or simply explore distinct fields which incorporate disciplines of computer science but are their own branches of study. 

Game development! Video games are enjoyed throughout the world and often have a heartfelt impact on players; creating your own game is extremely possible, even without professional study. The Unity game engine is a wonderful place to start, which requires basic familiarity with C#. After coming up with a game concept you wish to pursue (start with 2D games which are significantly less complicated than 3D), Brackeys’ tutorials on YouTube are great resources to make your ideas applicable. Any problems you encounter have likely already been solved on the Unity forums where game developers of all skill levels discuss issues. Finally, the indie game dev website itch.io is useful to play others’ games as inspiration as well as find free assets to use in your game (art sprites, sound effects, etc). Don’t give up and soon you’ll be amazed at what you can make!

Data Science! Analyzing data is substantial to all businesses. To get started as a beginner, you can practice creating your own data visualizations of data sets with resources online. Using Python libraries such as pandas, matplotlib, seaborn, and downloaded data sets, such as the Iris data set, figure out what relationship between variables you want to display on a visualization (pie chart, bar graph, scatter plot, etc) and code! While it may seem daunting, there are thousands of tutorials on YouTube which offer beginner examples on using the Python libraries listed above for data analysis. Continue practicing using free data set files from Kaggle. When you feel more comfortable creating data visualizations from data sets, you can move on to exploring the language R. You can find more information on downloading and getting started with R from a gracious redditor’s resources. In the future, you will be able to practice data preprocessing and wrangling with R. The use of data analysis is incredibly significant for any field ranging from bioinformatics and biotech to business and finance; practicing with online resources will be a great start if you are interested in pursuing the field in the future!