Welcome to my website! If you are interested in projects, or what I’m currently working on, please visit my projects page for descriptions. If you would like to get into contact with me visit the contact page. Otherwise below is a little bit about me!
About Me
Hello, I’m Derrick Neal! I was born in Grants Pass, Oregon, but I moved to Ashland, Oregon around the age of 10 and spent the remainder of my adolescence there. The warmth of my hometown community instilled in me a life-long value of altruism and volunteer work. As I’ve matured, this has become a staple of who I am. In high school, I dedicated my time and efforts to our local animal shelter. More recently, in my senior year of college, my programming team and I built an application for Shelter Care, a Eugene-based organization devoted to securing housing for those in need. I will continue to seek out ways to help the people around me and make them feel valued. This isn’t the only motivating element in my life, however.
Throughout my life I have always been an avid gamer (ask me about it, I love talking about video games!). Naturally, this drew my attention towards computers and software. After a year of nearly constant begging when I was around 15, my parents caved and purchased my first laptop. This is where I discovered my true love for computers and continued my love for video games. I always knew that my career path and computers would be entwined, but it took some time and experience for the image of my future to convert to a higher resolution. After trying out psychology, and sociology, I was left feeling dispassionate. Just at the right time, I was introduced to software development. I became aware that computers were being used in highly innovative ways to improve the lives of others. It merged my love for computers and my desire to help people. Computer science is the best of both of my worlds.
This led me to the University of Oregon, where I earned a B.S. in Computer and Information Science. In my undergraduate experience I persevered through all-nighters, frustrations of my projects fighting against me, and the general burnout of a college student. I’m proud of what I’ve done and what I’m going to do in my future. I look forward to utilizing my knowledge of computers and programming to continue my dedication to helping others.
My Skill Set
- C/C++
- I have a lot of experience using both C and C++ as a large majority of my classes had us using either C or C++ to design projects.
- Python/PyUnit
- Python is my language of choice! It was the first programming language I ever learned so naturally it holds a special place in my heart. That, and it being a great language to prototype projects as well as it being module rich is helpful!
- Java
- I learned many of the fundamentals of OOP using Java, things like classes, inheritance, and abstraction. Didn’t really go into polymorphism much using Java, it’s something I practice in other languages though!
- Git
- My version control language of choice! I am fluent in both command line, as well as a few of the more more popular git clients like Gitkraken.
- Bash
- As a mainly UNIX environment user I grew very accustomed to using the terminal to automate various tasks, such as compiling files and creating an executable. Or setting up a debug script which would automatically compile a with debug symbols and then run the program through Valgrind with certain flags. Very simple stuff, but .sh files are definitely helpful tools!
- JavaScript/React
- I don’t have as much experience using JavaScript as I do with other languages, but I have done commercial work using JavaScript and React.js as a framework for creating user interfaces that both have great functionality and can be broken down into modular components that can easily be dropped in, or shifted around then stylized to fit in.
- HTML5/CSS
- HTML and CSS skills came with my JavaScript skills, as I was doing web design it was not really possible for me to do one but not the other. Having designed a few websites at this point I am pretty confident in my skills with HTML and CSS.
- C#/.NET
- The newest language that I am excited about learning! So far I have made a few very basic apps so that I can get my head around the main concepts that are new to me in C#. I am excited to see what I can do with this language!
- TypeScript
- I really like TypeScript as an alternative to JavaScript. I am barely breaking into the language itself and there are already so many things to love about it. It’s strongly typed which is something I am used to, its a super set of JavaScript, so everything I know about it transfers over to TypeScript. Overall it seems like a very flexible language and looks very clean when in use.
- SQL
- As of right now SQL is the only language that I am familiar with querying. I like using it and designing schemas for database is pretty fun. Not to mention that it is incredibly useful for data storage and retrieval.
Topics I’m Currently Studying
- Machine Learning
- Artificial Intelligence
- Web Development
- Databases
- Optimization
derrickneal.com 