stormgren

My essay got me in to CMU (attending), UChicago, and a few others.

I thought the essay made a big difference for me. PM me if you want it.

Actually, you know what, I'll post it. Because I like it that much.
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The light casts an eerie, pale-blue glow on my face as I stare wide- and glassy-eyed at the screen. The room is silent apart from the loud click-clacking of keyboard keys. I unravel the difficult algorithms and untangle the graceful threads; the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. Compile... run... success. There is nothing quite like seeing something that you made, especially something as intricate as a computer program, finally work. I love distilling complex puzzles down to simple, elegant solutions.

Elegance is a difficult concept to define. The idea was probably best described by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who was not only a well-known French writer, but also an aircraft engineer. “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” When I write a program, I look for a solution that captures the essence of an intricate problem with a minimal amount of code.

I began programming in third grade. There were no programming courses offered at my school, so I taught myself. The first program I ever wrote was in QuickBASIC. BASIC was a very simple language to learn: the programmer used simple phrases of what was essentially English to program the computer. I distinctly remember being fascinated with writing complex loops and elaborate series of instructions and seeing the results of my effort carried out before my eyes. Within weeks I was making a colored circle bounce around the screen.

I moved on from BASIC relatively quickly. The language was clumsy, and it seemed to go against my personality. I do not like to write pages of complex prose when a few clear paragraphs will achieve the same effect. I aim to accomplish as much as possible with as little text as necessary; BASIC uses lots of words, but says very little. I quickly learned more complicated languages like C++ and Lisp that allowed much greater depth of expression.

For the past few years I have been a programmer for an online game based on Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books, a series of quirky fantasy novels. I create the cities that thousands of players explore and construct the quests and puzzles they labor to complete. The custom weapons I write are some of the most sought-after in the game. I am the benevolent leader of an appreciative people. The areas I build always have a surprise twist. A primary theme in one portion of the game I wrote was “fairy tales gone wrong.” I would take a story like Sleeping Beauty and twist it so that the player was suddenly responsible for cursing the fairy tale castle and it was up to him to correct the problem: the player was both the villain and the hero.

I also enjoy creating computer-generated art: three-dimensional realities of my own design. My art attempts to be photo-realistic, but I try to add a twist: one of my most elaborate pieces is a re-creation of M.C. Escher’s Ascending and Descending, which centers on an impossible staircase. However, my favorite creation is a landscape inspired by my grandfather’s paintings. My piece appears to be just a lighthouse until the eye draws back and realizes that there is no sea in sight.
I love these sorts of twists. I enjoy manipulating things to see them in novel and different ways. I am often able to grasp concepts in science and mathematics that are difficult for others to visualize. I love challenging myself to find solutions that leave others bewildered. Being able to see the heart of a problem makes me an effective computer programmer as well; the obvious way to deal with an issue is generally the crude way. I am frequently able to notice different, less obvious solutions.

As I sit and type, my face aglow with the pale blue light of the monitor, I construct programs that blur the line between the aesthetic and the mechanically precise. I craft places that combine the scientific and the artistic. I write poetry in the form of code, works of art masquerading as mathematical equations.

I create worlds.
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