Preperation for career advice: software engineering

[waldonext]

Hi, I am a freshman in high school and I have a strong interest in possibly turning the application of software engineering/artificial intelligence to medical situations (especially cancer patients). There have been three occurrences all in the past year in which cancer has affected one of my family members. Therefore I have an amount of motivation to do something about it. My question is what can I do to prepare myself for this in terms of what classes to take, what languages to learn, how to learn them, what type of post high school education would best suit me, ect. I realize that I am thinking about this a little bit early, however, my age only restricts me from taking certain classes at my school until I am a junior/senior. That being said, I am want to focus on whatever will prepare me most efficiently for what I will study after high school. My current knowledge of any kind of programming (even XHTML) is not very significant. I realize that learning what I need to learn to do this could take about a decade from the day I start because coding is not an easily understood and mastered activity. Even if I should master XHTML first, that is obviously what I am going to do. FYI the classes I would consider taking (non are required) in my junior and senior years (for the purpose of understanding what my school offers even though I don't know what other schools typically offer) would be Chemistry, Physics, Biotechnology & Genetics, Human Anatomy, Pre-Calculus, and Calculus. In addition, there is an online school which provides classes for me to take which are recorded on my transcript. Thank you.

[CaptainPanic]

The courses you suggest seem fine to me.

 

Later, consider to either enroll into a kind of medical school, or get educated in IT. And then you can specialize later into the other field. Specialization takes time.

[waldonext]

Thank you. Would you suggest getting experience with programming now with a language like c++ or something or wait until later? I know that would take time too but I am open to a lot of education options.

[CaptainPanic]

Thank you. Would you suggest getting experience with programming now with a language like c++ or something or wait until later? I know that would take time too but I am open to a lot of education options.

That would definitely be useful. But if you are gonna learn some programming outside your school-program, make sure to have fun while you learn.

 

I can't really give advice which language would be best... c++ perhaps, as you proposed yourself. Many people will also advise you Python. I think python is a little friendlier for new people.

[JohnStu]

Thank you. Would you suggest getting experience with programming now with a language like c++ or something or wait until later? I know that would take time too but I am open to a lot of education options.

 

Keep a part of your brain unfilled with data, and learn c++ later on is what I recommend. Java is good too since c++ does have harder syntax, to me. If your brain is filled when u start learning computer programming then you will end up forgetting some previously learned stuff in order to understand programming.

 

I recommend non-textbook books on basic programming, there are so many incredible good books. They teach you how to make simple games (some of them), such as snake, minesweepers, space invaders and so on.