Hi!

I'm Xander Gilson, a self-driven computer engineering student with a passion for software development and maker-style projects.

About Xander

I'm a third-year student studying both computer engineering and computer science at Colorado State University. In CSU's computer engineering program, I've become familiar with a wide range of real-world topics spanning from electrical engineering to mathematics to low-level architectures.

With a 3.679 GPA and multiple semesters on the Dean's List, I've consistently shown academic sucess in the Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering and Department of Computer Science. In all areas of my life, I try to maintain a policy of curiosity and I don't stop learning once I leave the classroom.

I have years of experience with team hardware-oriented programming through my time in FIRST Robotics, and I've been a longtime member of the Technical Arts team at Timberline Church, gaining valuable experience surrounding teamwork, leadership, and event management. I have further invested in those skills in my time at the Lory Student Center Events team, where I have consistently shown excellence in manging events with 200+ audience members and working with clients to create the best event possible.

Outside of my professional life, I often spend time learning different ways to code and building interesting and impactful projects, such as a game engine built in JavaScript.

Generative AI

While I acknowlege and accept that generative AI will be a critical and important part of the programming workflow, I also believe that AI can be a hinderance to learning. As such, unless stated otherwise, no code or other content presented on this website was created by generative AI. AI tools were occasionally used to help understand concepts or to do light debugging, but all final code was written by me. To me, programming isn't just a skill, it's an art and a creative outlet. The process of learning syntax, working with complex algorithms, and manually testing code is not a bug, but a feature. By working through the hardship of programming, I've gained a much deeper understanding than would've been provided to me by asking ChatGPT or Claude to do the hard work for me.