CompSci
6 : Spring 2009
Alexander Advani
Cyprus, Europe
My Biography
I was born in Edison, New Jersey but spent the first year of my life travelling around the world. After that I moved to Hong Kong for four years until finally I moved to the tiny Mediterranean island of Cyprus just before my 5th birthday. The only people to ever use my full name were my British professors in high school. Most people just call me Alex. I am a big fan of movies, series and stand-up comedy and yet I never watch TV. As both my parents are computer scientists I grew up in a house full of computer games, a pastime which has remained a passion of mine to this day. I am a member of the class of 2012 and I hope to graduate a biology major, a bioinformatics minor and with a certificate in genome sciences and policy.
My Computer Science
Biography
As mentioned earlier both my parents are computer scientists so I grew up in a house full of them. My first memory of using a computer was when I was five or six and I used to play games on my father’s desktop. My first experience of computers being used for non recreational purposes was in elementary school when from the age of nine onwards we were taught to use Microsoft Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint and other programs. When I was 11, with a lot of my father’s help, I started learning about HTML and together we created a website for my primary school. However, despite having used computers all my life I have only used Windows and have no experience with Macs or any other type, except the few times I used a friend’s computer. Computers play a big role in my life now. I use my laptop every day for everything from shopping to homework to talking to my friends. Since coming to Duke I have learned to use Perl as well, which was the first formal programming instruction I received.
My opinion on
Computer Science
Some computer scientists deal mostly with writing or modifying programs. Others work with robotics and artificial intelligence. Yet more design everything from a chip in a car to a supercomputer in the Pentagon. Computer science is a very versatile field and so it has applications that are useful in almost every other area of study. The articles by Jim Morris and Steve Lohr show this very well as they give examples of the many different forms and applications of computer science.