Alexander Schearer is a Duke junior majoring in the fields of Philosophy and Computer Science. He took his first computer science class when he was a freshman as part of the "Exploring the Mind", a collection of courses that focused on the mind-body problem. His favorite type of computer is a laptop, running Mac OS X, but he is also comfortable working on Windows, having used the platform for the majority of his life. Alex is rarely seen without his laptop, and he frequently opens it, too. More often than not, his laptop is a workstation for some programming project -- self-assigned or otherwise.
Alex isn't really interested in the science behind computers, but instead he prefers to program, and to deal with the problems that come up during software design. He often complains that "computer science" is just applied math -- he does not enjoy math. In his formative years Alex built and imagined many things, so perhaps computer programming is just part of this progression.
Alex openly admits that his favorite programming "problem" is a user management system. He tells us that in order to create such a system the foundation of the application must be laid, and the future of the application must be marked off. He concedes that his least favorite assignments deal with large amounts of poorly documented spaghetti code wherein he must update, extend or mangle something.
In the future, Alex plans to become a software developer. Specifically he is interested in web-based development. In private he would admit that being an entrepreneur and leading a start-up sounds best.
Authored by Alexander Schearer -- January 16, 2007