About Me #

It's me, Simeon Steward.

As the third of four brothers, growing up, it was often a competition at who would be the best. Who would be the tallest, strongest, and best at a board or card game? When our family got the game Dominion, I knew that I wanted to win against my two older brothers. So, I began to study the game. At first, it was just to be better than them, but I quickly discovered the wider competitive dominion scene. Dominion is very interesting because every game is different, with ten cards selected from a pool of 426 kingdom cards or 1.77 * 10^26 possible kingdoms. Hours and Hours were spent on this passion, eventually placing 4th in the 2018 Dominion World Championship. Recently, I have revived my interest in Dominion and have been developing a Dominion simulator in Rust.

My older brothers did robotics in high school, so naturally, I was excited as I entered high school. Under the second brother's tutelage, I learned the ropes, particularly the design and manufacture of robots. As a student on Team #3928 Neutrino, I have spent 1600+ hours on the Design, Manufacture, Assembly, Upkeep, and Coaching of competitive robots. This experience was invaluable in helping me to become a better leader, team member, and thinker, as each challenge we faced was unique yet built on previous knowledge.

You might ask, "If you were doing so well with mechanical design, why did you switch to programming?" I took a couple of programming classes at Iowa State while I was still in high school, and I loved it. Seeing your code finally work how you intend and the fact that I can do so many different projects without buying expensive machinery was compelling.

I have enjoyed my time at Iowa State; I have met many truly interesting people, mentored several people, and been on the leadership team of Salt Company and the Navigators Christian student ministries. I am very thankful for everyone and everything who helped me along my Iowa State journey, from the professors to my friends and the career fair. In the summer of 2022, I enjoyed the work that I did for Buildertrend, and that led me to be excited for the career ahead of me, whether with them or at another great company.

Iowa State offered me an opportunity to study software engineering abroad in New Zealand for a semester, and I jumped at the chance. I enjoy traveling, as it gives me a chance to see how different people, communities, and cultures solve a set of problems we all face. During my semester in New Zealand, I was challenged by how rigorous the courses were. Looking back on that time, I'm really glad that they were. It helped me learn how computer routers, compilers, backend, and frontend of websites work and pushed me to work harder.

This is where this story ends, for now. Feel free to reach out if you are interested in a talented software developer, just click the linkedin icon!