“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
I wrote my first line of code when I was twelve. My father challenged me to write a famous program called The Game of Life, which shows the evolution of cells on the monitor. I vividly remember going to sleep that night with a smile on my face, sliding between my sheets, feeling accomplished that I had solved the “game of life."
Since that day, something has drawn me toward programming. Understanding life as a combination of “Ones and Zeros,” the language that machines speak, uncovers endless opportunities; it allows us to calculate at the speed of light and solve difficult problems instantaneously. I find it's simplicity addictive, mind-catching, intoxicating. There’s One, and there’s Zero; True, and False; Right, and Wrong.
Yet as hard as I try, the real game of life cannot be beaten by code, and livelihood is not a combination of functions. As my wife Gili and I are expecting our first-born son after graduation, I hope he shares my curiosity for 1s and 0s. But it is even more important for me -- and it is my lifelong mission -- to lead by example and share with him my non-binary values: love for my family, ambition for my career, and passion for everything that I do.
— Yuval Gonczarowski