Sophomore Egan McComb did not grow up playing and working on computers. In fact, he did not learn to use one until he was nearly 14. But when Egan received a computer as a gift in the eighth grade, his life changed.
Like many students who make a hobby of computer programming, Egan became fascinated with writing and debugging software codes as soon as he discovered the complex process.
“I think that computer programming is the art of instruction,” Egan said. “When you program, you work a lot with logic and math. Most of the time, your program will not work the way it is expected to, and you have to debug it to remove these problems, an art in itself.”
Sophomore Sean Horton-Murphy loves programming for many of the same reasons. However, his background is nothing like Egan’s. Sean was working on computers almost before he could read, and he taught himself to write code while most children his age were learning how to write a paragraph.
“I was eight or nine; it was the early nineties, and not everything was as technically [sound] as it is today, so some things got kind of tedious,” Sean said.
According to both Sean and Egan, that is what programming is—building functions to speed and simplify the tasks people normally use computers to do.
One of Egan’s homemade programs makes it easier to read news online.
“There’s a program that I use that basically downloads all this news from a website, but … I only want to see the part that I haven’t read yet,” Egan said. “So I wrote a program that only shows me the part that I haven’t read.”
Like Egan, Sean uses his skill to make daily tasks easier. But Sean also enjoys working with other programmers on larger, more collaborative efforts. One project to which Sean contributed is the development of a free alternative to Microsoft Office.
“There’s a free software movement which is going on nearly since computers started,” Sean said. Egan is no stranger to the free software movement. In fact, his grandfather was one of its leading pioneers in the early days of computers during the sixties and seventies.
“One of the things [my grandfather] invented was the idea of ‘copyleft,’ which is basically free domain software,” Egan said. “Anyone could do whatever they wanted with it, unlike ‘copyrighted’ software. It is a very popular thing among hackers and programmers nowadays.”
Egan and Sean agree that while challenging, learning to program would be within the reach of anyone willing to crack open an instructional book or read some tutorials online.
“It’s nothing very hard,” Sean said. “It’s something designed to be read, designed to be usable by people.”
To the untrained eye, the world of computer code may seem like a fathomless maze of numbers and figures. But to Sean and Egan, it is a world where everything simply makes sense.
“I find programming to be enjoyable because I prize order, organization and efficiency,” Egan said. “It distracts [me] from the chaos of my daily life, allowing me to de-stress and get something useful out of it.”

a free software movement which is going on nearly since computers started,” Sean said. “It’s hard for one person to take on such a huge project, so you kind of do bits and pieces. … Each person contributes what they can.”
Egan is no stranger to the free software movement. His grandfather was one of its leading pioneers in the early days of computers during the 1960s and 70s.
“One of the things … [my grandfather] invented was the idea of ‘copyleft,’ which is basically free domain software,” Egan said. “Anyone could do whatever they wanted with it, unlike ‘copyrighted’ software. It is a very popular thing among hackers and programmers nowadays.”
Egan and Sean agree that while challenging, learning to program would be within the reach of anyone willing to crack open an instructional book or read some tutorials online.
“It’s …nothing incomprehensible to anyone,” Sean said. “It’s something designed to be read, designed to be usable by people.”
To untrained eyes, the world of computer code may seem like a fathomless maze of numbers and figures. But to Sean and Egan, it is a world where everything simply makes sense.
“It distracts [me] from the chaos of my daily life, allowing me to de-stress and get something useful out of it.”