I'm Nathan Parker, an aspiring developer
working to make big things happen.

As a student and individual on a continuous journey of curiosity, I'm the type of person with a drive to constantly learn from the world around me. With any bit of leisure time, I'll most likely allocate it towards school work and programming my future. I'm your typical computer geek with a passion for making things work for other people; seeing those people enjoy the end-product fuels this intense passion. So much so, that I quit playing baseball and dedicated my time to creating things with code. Nowadays, even video games have faded from my activities, to be transferred into learning and writing better programs.

To fulfill my love for computers, I accepted a pathway in Software Development that targeted and deepened my passion in pursuing the field as a dream job. But, I didn't randomly say one day “oh I'm going to do that” — a series of events had to occur before that conclusion was made back in 2021. That's where my father comes into the story, starting me off with consoles he grew up with and allowing me to explore and expand my curiosity as I grew:

2012

2015

2018

2021

2023

The Super Mario Effect

The start of my love for technology started when my father introduced me to his first-ever console, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). In which I experienced what Mark Rober coined, “The Super Mario Effect” starting a chain reaction for the love of gaming and the growth of technology. Going from the NES, GameCube, Wii, and then the Xbox 360. Always fine-tuning my mistakes to beat my brothers in Mario Kart Double Dash or save the Princess Peach from Bowser (again).

Appreciation of Technology

For my 8th birthday, I was given my mother's old laptop that was used to propel her education during college. At the time, I was really inspired and admired the film Back To The Future II, and watched many YouTube videos about the car and film. So, my father installed a fresh copy of the game City Car Driving Home Edition. Even going as far as downloading the modded Back To The Future cars for me to smack them into a concrete wall at 88 MPH (no, I didn't travel back in time — unfortunately). From this point forward, I always found ways to tweak and enhance my experience with these devices, and enjoyed every single second.

The Spark for Programming

In the spring months of 2018, I joined a local programming club at my library that taught an online programming language called Scratch. The day it started, sometime in early March, when I first connected the event block to the sprite's say block — something clicked. The sight of seeing something come to life from joining two blocks together left me in awe and permanently stained a desire to keep creating things, especially for others. From that day onwards, I've dedicated my passion towards the creation and maintenance of computer software.

Acceleration of Passions

To enhance on the monumental interest arising from Scratch, my friend, NotNinjaTalon, introduced me to the world of Minehut's server platform. I and Talon, decided to pull the trigger and dedicate our summers making two semi-successful servers called IslandNSky and Premiums; gaining each around 75 concurrent players daily at their peaks. Once school started back up, I made the pivotal leap towards my education by accepting the “Software Development” pathway at my high school. Learning high-level programming from HTML, CSS, JS, and Python; creating and maintaining projects to present to my class for all to enjoy.

Building Knowledge

After completing most of Computer Science II in high school, I decided I wanted to go back and tune my web development skills from 2021 and 2022. And as thus such, I started development on this site (with a lot of prototyping) throughout the whole year. However, and thankfully, my high school had nothing beyond Computer Science II, which to continue the pathway led to Ivy Tech being the next place for my studies. They're a community college in Indiana, and happened to start with Website Development — which was perfect for my situation and lead me to the advancement of my website making skills!

Upon building such software, there is a lot that goes into the process. Even with small-scoped projects, I can never find the “good enough” balance to satisfy my wants for my users and myself. This is apparent when I look back on old software that I write, and is almost like the driving force towards the projects/software that I build. Even with teachers reiterating the fact, “you have to accept when a project is good enough, and just satisfies the needs required” is a common saying I can't seem to settle with. Another thing is the acceptance of failure, every time I tackle a new project, I'm always going into the depths of the unknown. Failure is a key part of what I do, and learning how to tackle, accept, and learn from such failures is what drives me into loving software development.

Now, some developers go the self-taught route (usually because of a multitude of reasons) but I'm someone who loves the aspect of learning in a classroom environment with comprehensible projects to present my understanding and knowledge building. I know not every course is structured as so; however, I'm committed to going to a four-year-college to study a branch of computer science, and thus, these are the scholarly steps I've taken:

Over the years, technology has grown to be a big part of my life — from the simplest consoles to the most complex computers. In my dreams, I hope to make big things happen with the teamwork of others. From fixing the bugs, to imagining the scope of the latest features. Building the software of the future is something, no matter what blocks the path, brings me joy unlike no other. Hopefully, one day, I'll make those dreams of mine and others — a reality.