David Malan

I don't want to get into a whole internet fight here, but... This is David Malan.

I think a lot of it honestly comes from a place of insecurity.

Like, I really don't want to be the one on stage in front of a bored audience.

If you're going to call yourself an engineer, you should be understanding everything that's happening among those layers.

It's harder for us now to hand to the administrative board of Harvard or the Honor Council, so to speak, a smoking gun.

Yeah, it's a really good question.

So I was that problem set.

My first Hello World program was in September of 1996 when I first stepped foot in a class called CS50.

I was a sophomore at the time and hadn't honestly gotten up the nerve until sophomore year to even consider taking the class.

Like when I came into college,

first year, and this is a story I tell at the very start of CS50 most years, I really gravitated toward fields that were more familiar, more comfortable for me.

And I share with students that I really liked constitutional law.

That was my favorite class in high school.

And I figured that meant when you get to college, I should probably major or concentrate, as we say at Harvard, in government.

And so for the first year, year and a half, I was heads down focused on

studying government.

But when I finally got up the nerve to like follow some friends, I think, into the CS50 classroom that day, when this very well-reputed computer scientist, Brian Kernaghan, was at the helm for just that one year, I was totally hooked.

And it was the first time in like 19 years that homework was fun.

So much so that when the week's problem sets or assignments would come out, I would look forward to going back to my dorm on Friday evenings and

to work through the night on my CS50 problem sets.