De’Shaun Broadnax knew that he wanted to work in computer programming when he was in elementary school.

“我绝对喜欢编程，”德肖恩说. “When I was in fourth grade, me and my cousin came up with this business to sell our toys and bikes. I figured that we couldn’t have a business without a website, 我的第一个网站是为我们的玩具销售公司建的.”

幸运的是，De 'Shaun目前的工作是程序员的梦想. As a contract Software Engineer with Embedded Flight Systems, Inc., De’Shaun spends all day programming software applications for NASA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) Program 在戈达德太空飞行中心. 德肖恩对编程的热情和他的 计算机科学学士学位 from 满帆大学 set him on his path to NASA — and his team recently won the Robert H. Goddard Award for their service to the Goddard Space Flight Center.

德肖恩在马里兰州的乔治王子县长大. 在他为自己的玩具销售公司建立了网站之后, he continued to teach himself about computers and programming. He learned HTML, CSS, and JavaScript when he was in middle school. When he was in seventh grade, he decided he wanted to attend 满帆.

“我爸爸是个音乐家. 他去了全帆赛，但没能完成. 我一直都很有创造力, and I wanted to honor my family by getting my degree… What drew me to [满帆] was the innovation of the school. I was a creative kid, but the way I applied that creativity was through computers. I wanted to surround myself with other creatives,” De’Shaun says.

满帆’s 计算机科学 program helped De’Shaun harness programming basics so he could use technology to express his creativity. He learned foundational programming languages like C and C++, 以及其他与后端编程相关的技能. He pushed himself to learn everything he could about software engineering; he even found a likeminded 满帆 student to run a web development and maintenance business with.

“I would wake up at 7 AM and walk to the 满帆 library. In the library, me and my friend Jamar would plan out which shopping center to go to. Our plan was to go door-to-door to every small business we could find and sell them a website,他说.

De’Shaun’s business gave him professional programming experience and helped him find his current job. One of his web maintenance clients had a connection to NASA’s GOES program and encouraged De’Shaun to submit his resume for an internship. That internship turned into a part-time contract job as a Software Engineer for the GOES Program.

NASA’s GOES Program collects the Earth’s weather data from satellites positioned in space. NASA和NOAA使用这些数据进行天气报告, 火箭发射, 商业航班, 和更多的. De’Shaun is on the support team for the GOES Program and the Goddard Space Flight Center, go团队成员在哪里工作. He spends his days programming software applications for the team and the flight center. 最近, 他开发了一款定制的桌面酒店应用, which helped the center transition to a hybrid work environment.

“由于COVID，太空飞行中心关闭了... A whole bunch of people wanted to stay home after COVID, they didn't want to go back [to the office]. So they decided to build a hoteling app and everybody who wanted to go to work could just book a desk,德肖恩解释道.

De’Shaun’s team’s hard work on the hoteling app and other support tasks is paying off: They recently won the Robert H. Goddard Award for their service to the space flight center. De’Shaun knows that his persistence was key to his success; he thinks that the same mentality can help other aspiring programmers.

“No matter how stacked the odds are against you, you don't give up. 当你觉得自己失败的时候, you haven't until you’ve given up… That's what I could tell somebody else is just keep going.”