Education

I attended Stony Brook University in Long Island, New York during the fall season of 2004. It is a beautiful and spacious campus located in northern Suffolk County and I am pleased with my choice to attend there.

For academics I chose to pursue a Bachelor’s of Computer Science and by spring 2008 I graduated with honors in that major. Aside from computer science courses I also took a few physics courses which turned out to be interesting course work that could be complimented by my affinity for math.

I met some great people during my time at Stony Brook and to this day I still keep in close contact with a handful of them.

Course related work

The computer science program at Stony Brook University covered a varied range of topics. Starting off with the basics of programming up to polymorphism, multi-threaded applications, refactoring, design patterns and analysis of algorithms. The primary language taught in these classes was Java, with a handful of other courses requiring the usage of Assembly, C, C++, CSS, HTML, Javascript, JSP, SQL, SML, XML and XSLT.

My favorite classes were algorithm analysis/design, computer game programming and the third course in the chain of Computer Science (Computer Science III). These courses offered the most challenging course work and heavy workload. I turned out lucky in the respect that I managed to take them all during separate semesters to avoid being buried in course work.

Algorithm analysis/design relied on critical thinking throughout the semester to determine the most efficient way to solve particular problems. During class we would employ tactics such as dynamic programming, greedy algorithms, divide and conquer and many others throughout the course.

Computer game programming relied heavily on programming in C++ to meet development benchmarks throughout the semester. First integrating simple UI elements then leading to two-dimensional platforming which then lead to multithreading, memory pools and audio integration. At the second half of the semester the class divided into groups of two to develop a two-dimensional game with all those elements. When completed all teams were entered into a competition where the best game was judged by people with careers in the game industry, my team LimpCactus won the award of best game.