Joshua Neal's Bio

When I was very young, my obsession was playing games on our Atari 2600 video game console, and decided that I wanted to become a game programmer. Somehow I managed to talk my parents into selling the Atari and buying a Commodore 64 computer, and proceeded to learn how to program, first in BASIC and then in assembler.

Later on, I discovered the field of computer science and it has become my passion. I enjoy using this knowledge to produce better software, and have even started the first computer science news site, csdaily.com. I hope to have time to promote this after I graduate as it often seems that interest in the field is waning, which I think is going to hurt the software development world. While I am at SJSU, I am trying to take advantage of the environment to extend my knowledge as much as possible.

My research interests include software design approaches, constraint programming, reverse engineering of software, managing complexity in disparate interconnected systems, and game design and programming. I enjoy working at the boundaries between various software and hardware systems, and also working at the hardware level. I code using Linux regularly and enjoy the ability to easily see how any piece of the open-source software functions.

I live in San Jose with my wife and son, who is almost two and is presently the biggest consumer of time in my life. This is soon to change as we have another baby due in May. When I have spare time, I enjoy spending time with my family, playing board games, interfacing electronic gadgets, building robots and sculptures from Lego elements, and studying computer science. I enjoy playing and coding classic-style video games as a hobby, and also make paintings to keep my right brain busy as well.