Aug 29th, 2007

What we do
It has been at least a quarter century ago since I saw my first computer terminal. Scary thought. A decwriter running at 300 baud. In those days very few people saw, worked with, or explored microcomputers. I learned Dec Basic by example, then explored the technology library at the local college, and hung out with other like-minded teenagers at the back of the few computer stores in town. A true 'geek'.

When the Macintosh came out I bought 'Inside Macintosh Volumes I,II,III' and read it cover to cover. I then bought a Mac and learned Forth so that I could at least program it. In the late 80's I discovered Object Oriented Programing, C++, and SQL. All these were self-taught through reading and programming. Is there a pattern here? In the early 1990s I worked with Omnis 5, and 7, a wonderful 4GL that I applied the OO programming model to. With it I built a database transaction framework ,which was sold to other Omnis developers.

As times changed and technologies progressed, I discovered Smalltalk, and had the privilege of learning from some real masters. Reading all the VisualAge for Smalltalk manuals I could find didn't prepare me for the experience of watching an expert at work. For example, in one of our lessons, this expert took a raw class definition and a "Does not Understand" walkback and around it constructed a working class by using the debugger and additional browsers. Until one sees and understands the real power of Smalltalk, one cannot master it. This example of learning by being paired to a master has now been distilled into a discipline call eXtreme Programming, In retrospect, that discipline is what I was exposed to when I learned about Dec Basic.

Based on my past history and credibility, I was provided with an opportunity to apply Smalltalk to a very difficult problem. From that experience, I learned more about Garbage Collecting theories than I thought possible.

In the late 90's I took specifications much like those detailed at the IONA site (via web.archive.org) and turned them into a working system.The objectives were to write code that would require little in the way of support. It had to be self healing, fault tolerant, as well as have stability. I even completed the documentation.

If I can help you make your next project successful please email me. If you need more detailed information you can find it in my resumé.

Finally, I'll leave you with some icons of my generation.

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