Dev Catalyst Alumni Spotlight: Robert Yin and How to Overcome Adversity

Robert Yin, sophomore computer science major with a concentration in artificial intelligence at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, believes there are two main adversities in coding: the intrinsic adversity and the extrinsic adversity. 

Though the inerrant, intrinsic difficulty of problem-solving can be conquered through learning and education, the extrinsic adversity of societal pressure is not as easy to overcome. 

“You just need to prepare for adversity but know you're the one who really decides that coding is right for you,” says Yin. “That extrinsic adversity of people telling you that you're not cut out for coding is something that only you know and only you can understand. It's always good to see people who prove that wrong.”

Yin wants to encourage young students that there is not a single, preconceived path one has to take when entering the world of coding—a lesson he learned while on Dev Catalyst’s San Francisco trip, given to students who have excelled in the annual competition.

“It was cool not only to sit down with software engineers but to also see different aspects of the company like the jobs that help facilitate the whole system or even roles that have much more creative experiences like user designing or graphic designing,” Yin says. “All these jobs still benefit from computer coding, and it's cool to see that the world of computer sciences isn't just one conception.” 

He says he appreciates how Dev Catalyst teaches students these complex skills in fun and comprehensible way because from firsthand experience, he knows jumping into coding without any help can be intimidating. 

“I started out trying to learn how to code on my own, and I realized it was a very big issue because I was trying to dive into these really big, heady concepts with no preparation whatsoever,” Yin says. “It ended up being a really big failure and almost set me back a little bit, but then, when I got to high school and learned about Dev Catalyst, it was really cool to see that anybody could get started. I just began it all there.” 

Since graduating and beginning his college career, Yin has been able to further develop these skills in ways he never expected. He says it’s become valuable for him in many collaborative college settings to know how to work with other people because he says it's important to know not only how to write out code but also how to be able to explain it to someone else.  

He says he is grateful for theCO and the work they do to develop students in these skills, and he has been able to see, in a very tangible way, how this education and love for coding has impacted his life in so many ways.  

“I started developing an interest very early on because I saw coding as a really good tool for problem solving, not only in an abstract creative way, but also in a very logical concrete way,” Yin says. “Coding is really a large field where so many people can bring their problems and can get them solved.”