<p>So this year my physics teacher started a robotics club which I joined because I want to do engineering/IT in college. I also joined the academic competition team because I thought it would be fun. </p>
<p>However robotics club meets literally everyday after school from 4-6. Our competition is this Saturday. I'm part of the software team within the club but I haven't contributed ANYTHING for the code. Like, I don't have much experience with code and I'm the only girl in the club. A few of the other guys have experience with the programming language so they're able to do the work, leaving me just sitting in the room for 2 hours. I've tried Googling stuff to get some knowledge and maybe help out but it's not working out.</p>
<p>Academic Competition Team (ACT) meets Mondays and Wednesdays from 4-6 with competitions on Thursdays till about 6:30. I attended a few practices and one competition (which we won) but because of robotics club, I've had to skip meetings and competitions. As a result, I decided to quit ACT and devote myself to robotics but I'm having trouble actually contributing to the club. At least with ACT, I could answer some of the questions and do something for the team. </p>
<p>But I decided to just do robotics because coding/technology is where I want to go in the future. But now I'm having second thoughts about my decision. Also, I'm the only girl in robotics and I thought that would be something to add to my college app essays. You know, gender representation and all.</p>
<p>I do have the option of quitting robotics and going back to ACT. Should I do that?</p>
<p>Why can’t you do both? Go to ACT either Monday or Wednesday, and your Thursday competition, and go to Robotics the remaining days. And don’t just sit there at the meetings, it’s a good opportunity to learn how to code. Try CodeAcademy, my brother learned a lot off of that. If you have any questions, you can talk to someone while you’re there.</p>
<p>Go to ACT where you can excel at. Decisions about college majors change quite a bit, so you don’t have to do robotics now. It is also time consuming if you don’t know programming. There is always college to learn programming anyways. Long term career prospects in programming are not good as we outsource these jobs to India and China. If you don’t want your job to be outsourced try law, medicine, business (economics, finance, marketing, accounting), health careers (dentist, pharmacist, physician assistant). These jobs can’t be easily outsourced as you need a license to practice. If you want to be in STEM fields, chemistry, biochemistry, chemical engineering have better job prospects.</p>
<p>Do ACT where you will feel like a contributing member of the team. It’s not as demanding of your time and you’ll probably become more well rounded. Continue to learn about robotics, but until you actually understand it and can hold your own, you will continue to feel like you’re simply taking up space.</p>
<p>You should probably try to get more experience in infomatics before going into an information/computer-science career path. A lot of my friends “like” the idea of coding, but have never gotten past the basics. Who knows, maybe you’re one of the exceptions? You’re still in high school, so you have plenty of time to experiment. Just make sure you don’t wait until the last minute.</p>
<p>If you want to get started programming, here are the key questions you want to ask yourself:</p>
<p>What language do I want to use?
With what software do I want to program in (IDE, text editor)?
What will be my first project?</p>
<p>You can figure out all of the above with the help of Google. If you get lost, don’t worry about it, all great programmers were beginners at one point. If you find yourself not interested/ enjoying the process, maybe computer science isn’t right for you. There are many other fields out there.</p>
<p>I’m the only girl on robotics and my first year was like that. Just bother them. There’s always loads of people who just sit around and a few people who do all the work, and those are the people who should be teaching you how to do the work. Watch them code. Ask them “what does that do?” “can you teach me how to do that?” “can I try?” If you don’t ask, they won’t show you. On my team at least all the coder/do it all yourself type guys were quiet and willing to not engage with anyone so my constant questioning caught them off guard. Gradually though I learned, now I’m captain.</p>
<p>yayitsme123, that’s awesome. But I don’t think it’s for me. I’d rather do ACT which I’d be better at and maybe learn some coding on my own. But thanks for the advice.</p>