My name is Alex Brick, and I am currently a middler (third-year) student at Northeastern University, located in scenic Boston, Massachusetts. I am studying for a B.S. in Computer Science, though I am leaving open the prospect of obtaining a Masters or PhD at some point in my life. There is a strange program here, resulting in a five year program for a B.S., but I may be graduating in six years, with a Master's.
My interest in computers began many, many years ago, at the ripe age of 10. I can still remember my first number guessing game that drew me into this complex world of interactive and powerful software. Of course, it also had no loops, no flow control, or anything. Just if statements and function calls. Maybe it wasn't such a great program after all...
Well, either way, times have changed. After taking AP Programming in my high school and being introduced to object-oriented design, I discovered what a wide, wide world computer science really is. I interned at NIH, where I wrote actually-used software, and so became even further exposed to the world of programming. In 2005, I released my first application, lineaksetup, a configuration utility for the LinEAK project.
I am now several years into my college experience, and have taken courses in all aspects of Computer Science, from low-level C and assembly language to Theory of Computation and Algorithms. I have not, of course, limited myself only to Computer Science, and have taken courses about Japan (a country that is very interesting to me), philosophy, physics, and some higher-level math.
During the second half of 2008, I participated in a six-month co-op with Amazon.com, where I was a part of the Client Experience Analytics team. This was a remarkable experience, where I was given a high level of autonomy and was tasked with designing and building services and pieces of infrastructure on my own. I emerged from this a far better developer, I believe.
I continue my studies to this day, still steadily learning. It is my hope to acquire a wealth of theoretical and practical knowledge, to take my skills to the highest level they can go.