About Me
Hi, I'm Jake! I'm a developer, designer, learner, and tinkerer. I love programming, design, and food.
More than anything else, I'm interested in fun experiences that incorporate extrinsic information and value. For example, Geoguessr, a game where you are placed in a random Google Streetview location and have to guess where you are, is an excellent example of incorporating extrinsic information, because by improving at the game you get to learn about our real world. I believe that these kinds of experiences are more valuable than both pure study and pure fiction, because they encourage the experience through gamification.
You can see this principle at work in MPG, an app I created. By giving players minigames such as, "Guess the current temperature in Lima, Peru," they are rewarded for knowing something completely unrelated to the game itself. Additionally, MPG encourages you to use your smartphone to play something as a group, instead of scrolling alone. In this way, I counter the growing perception of smartphones as tools instead of toys.
How I Got Here (a Tangent)
In the beginning...
I don't know exactly when, but at some point when I was a child, someone decided to give me access to a computer...big mistake, I know.
For the most part, I just played Minecraft for hours on end. But one fateful day, I discovered a new hobby! (don't worry, I kept playing Minecraft too)
Here's the jist: when I was 9 years old, I witnessed my brother programming a text-based RPG, and I decided that I had to make one too, because that's what little brothers do.
I didn't really know what I was doing, but I loved trying to figure it out. Eventually, I realized that semicolons were important for some reason.
After a long hyper-obsession session, I decided Java just wasn't really the vibe. At some point in the coming weeks, I discovered Scratch instead!
None of my Scratch projects were particularly ground-breaking, but being able to easily create simple projects with visuals gave me everything I needed to fully fall in love with programming. (and little did I know, I would be doing the same kind of programming in high school, 5 years later!)
Evolution!
A couple years later, I realized that 11-year-old me was a lot smarter than 9-year-old me, and I went back to trying to code without blocks.
Enter: Javascript!
My early Javascript days were blissfully ignorant. It was kind of like vibe-coding, but instead of AI, I had pure childish wonder.
"I wonder if moving this line here will make it run."
"What happens if I just delete this line?"
"Is this going to run in under 5 hours? Who cares!"
It was all silly ideas, no data structures, no time complexity, no Dijkstra's. What a time to be alive!
Behind the silliness, I like to think this more "bricolage" approach to programming gave me a unique perspective, one rarely held by programmers who have only received formal education: sometimes coding can be an art, not just a science!
Evolution! Again!
Sadly, high school was the beginning of the end for that blissful ignorance.
I quickly discovered that my school offered multiple coding courses, where I could learn to code in a more...formal way.
But don't get me wrong, I actually loved these courses!
Thankfully, I found myself working with Processing, as well as HTML and CSS, both of which still allowed me to express my creativity.
At the same time, the more rigorous AP level courses made me a better programmer, more technically capable of creating whatever I wanted!
The End (of the beginning)
So there I was, a Computer Science nerd, but with a special spark of creativity and playfulness.
I guess I will bottle up that creativity, go study theory, and maybe one day I can work at FAANG...
...wait a second, what's this?
Immersive Media Design?
I'm listening...
My Education
What is Immersive Media Design?
First things first: I'm currently pursuing both a B.S. in Computer Science and a B.A. in Immersive Media Design. Everyone recognizes Computer Science, but what exactly is 'Immersive Media Design'?
Despite what all of the job application "Select your major" drop-down menus say, Immersive Media Design is a real thing, that I didn't make up!
The quickest, simplest explanation is that IMD is a mixture of University of Maryland's Studio Art and Computer Science degrees, but sprinkle in some VR, interactive media, and a whole lot of collaboration! Simply put, we learn how to make experiences that are immersive and engaging.