Mohammad Taha Bin Firoz

Academic

Career

Verbatim text

National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences (NUCES), Islamabad Campus I Pakistan                                    261 

Mohammad Taha Bin Firoz (i17-0323) 

When I look back to one of my oldest memories, I see myself sitting in a chair, observing my father 
and elder brother intently as they are getting our first family PC built at a store. I was blessed with a 
father who understood the importance of computers and what they meant for our future. By giving 
his children access to a personal computer at a very early age, he kindled our need to learn and 
understand the world of computers. Him being a very early programmer, it was typical to find 
archaic sheets of hand written assembly, 5 inch floppy drives and books on programming littered 
around the house.  
This environment had driven all my elder siblings to learn some skill on the family machine, 
whether that was learning to browse on dial-up internet or even make digital art. Though every 
sibling had their own contribution in building my interest in the big white tower, my sister had by 
far the most influence. Watching her manipulate images in Photoshop and learn HTML over a 
weekend amazed my young mind. My first foray involved me clicking around the desktop and 
tinkering with programs. I learnt flash animations at the ripe age of 6 years old, and started 
exploring the World Wide Web by then. While a majority of my time was spent playing online flash 
games, I'd spend the rest of my time using Google to learn about how things worked. As I grew 
more acquainted with the machine, I had this constant urge to learn how it worked. I was always 
looking for answers to questions like; ‘How do computers work?’ or ‘How are games made?’. That's when my journey with programming began, I started to learn my first programming language C and 
C++ at the age of 10. My life was inevitably tied with the world of programming when a good friend 
of mine introduced me to a relatively new game called Minecraft. I spent a better part of my 
childhood playing that game and modding it. This led to my first steps into my second language, Java, at age 13. I'd spend days pulling my hair making the tiniest change in the game and 
celebrating when it worked.  
My grades, however, had always remained average because I wasn’t interested in the education I 
got at school. I started working hard when my A levels began and by that time I’d already started 
learning my third programming language Python and was ecstatic to learn that it was a part of my 
Computer Science course. My sister had sent my application for Computer Science in Fast, which I 
was skeptical about initially. I spent the rest of my time working hard and studying in remembrance 
of my late father who had passed away from cancer a couple of years ago. 
It's not a surprise that I did end up flourishing in Fasts programming heavy environment. I’ve had 
very few teachers who I can say had a strong impact on my life, and I found a majority of them at