Will's blog

I'm seriously looking into doing grad school starting Fall of 2005 and getting either a Masters or a PhD in Computer Science. As such, I started reading through the sites of schools in the area that offer that sort of thing. The NEU CCS site is pretty interesting. They list faculty and their research interests of which the following piqued my interest:

• Lieberherr and Lorenz - the Demeter project, Adaptive Programming (and AOP), and dealing with software design issues. This is very much something I'd like to pursue.
• Clinger - compiler optimization for higher-order languages and nonpredictive generational garbage collection. This is really interesting as well.
• Tarasewich - bridging information systems, computer science, engineering, and marketing. It's similar (or at least parallel) to what I've been doing for the last few years and it might be interesting to pursue.
• Wand - programming-language semantics and their application to compiler correctness. This is really fascinating--but I have less a priori knowledge and experience of this than I do for the above faculty and their research interests (though that's a very first-blush analysis).
• Williams - machine learning, a subspecialty of artificial intelligence. This is also really interesting.

When I was talking with the University of Phoenix folks (I tossed around getting an MBA for a brief period of time and bumped into a UoP booth while fetching lunch), they were pretty adamant about me answering the question of why I want to go back to school. I think that's a little weird. I want to go back to school because I want to flesh out my knoweldge and experience in various areas and I think the most effective way to do that especially in regards to Programming Language design and theory is to go back to school. Sure, I can putz around on python-dev and read the articles listed on LtU as I've been doing the last couple of years, but I'd get a lot more out of getting a Masters or PhD. And I think now is a good time in my life to do it.