Ethan insists he’s not “good at programming—[he] just built a lot of things.” Things like an app to track progress on research papers for Commonwealth history classes, an algorithm that can play Battleship, and a convolutional neural network that can process handwriting. He can also pick a plane right out of the sky, identifying small differences between otherwise indistinguishable jumbo jets. Keep reading to discover more you probably didn’t know about this senior from Newton, including the key to improving as a programmer (with no offense to Commonwealth’s Computer Science teachers…), the novel he finds enjoyably confusing, and his thoughts on “the Greek dude called Xeno…”

Getting to Know You

What is bringing you joy right now?

Hanging out with friends and bubble tea. I like bubble tea.

What is your favorite book (or a book you’ve re-read)? 

I really like Catch-22 [by Joseph Heller]. I've reread it a few times already. It's heavy on dark humor, and it makes everything both incredibly absurd and logical at the same time. He jumps around in the timeline a lot. It's a very confusing way of telling the story, which I really enjoyed.

What do you think is the most intriguing paradox? 

There is this paradox by the Greek dude called Xeno. Essentially, if you have a turtle and Achilles in a race, and you give the turtle a head start, Achilles would be able to pass the turtle because he's a lot faster, right? But Xeno said, “Well, if you consider the fact that Achilles has to cover half the distance that the turtle has traveled first, and then half of that distance, and you continue going like that, then there is no world in which Achilles can pass the turtle.” At the time, it was a crazy paradox that nobody could figure out, but mathematics has advanced enough that now you can use calculus to prove that Achilles can actually pass the turtle, which I think is amazing.

What are your favorite comfort foods? 

Dumplings. 

What was/is your favorite class (at Commonwealth or elsewhere)? 

Probably Multivariable Calculus. It's particularly cool how to make connections with how it can be applied to other topics. For example, gradients are applied to train neural networks by calculating the partial derivative of the loss function at every node. There was actually a groundbreaking paper by Yann LeCun [Turing Award winner and Chief AI Scientist at Meta] that cleverly applied a concept in calculus called chain rule to optimize this gradient computation in training.

When do you feel the most enjoyably challenged?

Definitely doing the research paper [for U.S. History]. I had a lot of fun writing it last year. It was about the legality of putting regulations on civilian encryption, which is something the United States tried to do in the ’90s. Most of those restrictions were overturned because activists pushed back and students sued the government because they couldn't publish their research. It was really interesting, looking through all of the court opinions and newspaper articles from that time.

What are people most surprised to learn about you?

I mean, most people know I really enjoy airplanes, but something people don't know is that I can actually identify pretty much every single commercial aircraft down to the model and variant. And sometimes even the sub-varient. There are a lot of nuances between aircrafts that people don't really pick up on. For example, the four most popular models of the Boeing 777 look pretty much the same, but the -300ER variant has a slightly larger general electric engine, whereas the 300 has a PW 4000 engine. And the -200ER differs from the -300ER as it does not have raked wingtips.

I've been obsessed with airplanes for a while now, but part way through eleventh grade, I discovered this ancient camera in storage at my house, and I started doing airplane photography. I usually go plane spotting in Winthrop; Coughlin Park gives you a direct line of sight to Logan's runway 33 right and 27 right. Also Constitution Beach, with views of runways 22 left and 22 right, is a pretty optimal location to watch take offs and taxiing operations.

Pen or pencil?

Definitely pencil. I can see the utility of a pen, but I like erasing.

Fall, winter, spring, or summer?

Probably late fall/early winter, because the weather is optimal, and the leaves falling off the trees look pretty.

Life at Commonwealth (and Beyond)

What was your first impression of Commonwealth and how has it mapped to your experience?

I thought it was incredibly small, and that's still my impression, but it's something that I really like. Before, in middle school, it was difficult to have access to your teachers. Now, I can pretty much walk into anybody's office to ask questions. Also, you get to know a lot more people in a smaller community. 

Tell us more about your work as a Web developer/computer programmer. What piqued your interest in programming and when? How has your approach evolved over time?

I started doing computer science the summer before I entered Commonwealth. I was planning to take computer science at Commonwealth just to see how it went. But I learned a lot the summer before, and so I started building things. That's where a lot of my experience comes from. Now, I have a certain degree of intuition about how things work, but I wouldn't say I'm necessarily good at programming—I’ve just built a lot of things. Many of these projects were pretty successful, and a lot of them were very terrible.

A lot of my favorite projects were related to designing algorithms. I made an algorithm to heuristically play Battleship and then another one to deterministically win Connect Four. During tenth-grade Project Week, I built a compiler using LLVM, and then, more recently, I built an LSTM network to do sentiment analysis on movie ratings. 

What’s your advice for students interested in computer science?

At least in Commonwealth computer-science classes, you should definitely ask a lot of questions, and email or talk to the teacher every time you're stuck on something. 

Code readability is also something that people should pay attention to. I’ve written really bad code, in the sense that it's difficult to understand or uses very cursed hacks, and a few weeks later, when I go back to fix issues with that code, I waste time wondering what I was thinking three weeks ago, and that’s not very efficient. The CS classes I’ve taken here are about building code that's readable and code that you can understand.

But I also think, to a certain degree, it's not enough to just listen to people talk or teach about computer science. You have to do computer-science problems or build projects. One useful tool called LeetCode provides a bunch of interesting computer science puzzles you can solve. 

Do you see yourself as a programmer in the future?

I think that's a difficult question, but probably not, because the computer-science job market is really over-saturated, and a lot of the more simple jobs could be done with AI. ChatGPT can actually pass a lot of coding interviews, which is kind of scary to think about. I still think computer science will be a very legitimate career in the future, but I don't have enough experience to talk super deeply on that. I hope to enter the AI field in the future, and from what I know, it’s quite math-centric. 

How has your Commonwealth experience colored the way you look at the world? How you plan for your future?

Taking Commonwealth classes in general has taught me a lot more about the world and pointed me at what I want to do. Doing computer science over the summer before Commonwealth got me interested in computer science, and that was a direct result of wanting to take computer science in my first year of Commonwealth. 

What’s your advice for prospective students considering Commonwealth?

Definitely take advantage of the small community and access to teachers. Don't worry too much about grades in your first year—they’re pass-fail—and focus more on learning.

What would you tell your ninth-grade self?

I don't think I would give my ninth-grade self any advice. The past three years have been an important learning experience, and I see value in experiencing it holistically with no biases. 

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