Five Minutes with... Danny Iland
You knew you were headed for a career in Computer Science when...
I got a computer when I was 11, and just loved tinkering with it and
actually enjoyed constantly fixing Windows 98. I built its replacement
a few years later, and by then was tired of tinkering with Windows...
which led me to Linux...which led me to programming.
What is your favorite class and why?
I'm really enjoying Computer Organization right now. Writing in very
low level languages is pretty fun, and requires a very different thought
process than anything else I've ever done, only one step up from a machine.
I'm also really happy with Modern US Foreign Relations. Professor Henning
has us do things like write Presidential Address madlibs, then look at
various addresses throughout history and see how well they fit (pretty well).
One piece of advice I have for 1st year students is...
Go climbing in the red barn, race your car at the Autocrosses here, explore
all the cool things in Rochester, just branch out and do things! At RIT,
get involved with some cool computing project, either with a professor or
other students. Do more than the bare minimum.
If you could have dinner with a famous computer
scientist, living or dead, who would you choose?
I think I would invite
Edsger Dijkstra
and
Donald Knuth,
then act like they
had each invited the other. It would be way more interesting to eavesdrop
on their conversation than to be the inadequate partner to either of them.
What is the most interesting project you have worked on,
either in a course or on the job?
The Computer Science 4 project of a generic game solver. The idea was to
write one algorithm that can play multiple games. I had never done useful
generic programming or interfaces, and it was really cool to be able to take
a program that plays Knockout and make it play Connect 4 also in only a
few hours, with no modification to the core of the program.
Where do you see yourself in ten years?
I'm not really sure yet. I think it depends on how awesome my co-ops are
and what kind of job offers I get when I graduate. If I get offered something
amazing, I'll probably take it, but I can totally see myself continuing on to
get a graduate degree as well.
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