A Biography by the Books
1 Introduction
Reading is a formative passion. A passion which never let me down from
the earliest times. What's more natural then, than to write a
biography as an essay geared by the books1 which
marked my professional career? Somewhere else, I will try this
exercise for my personal endeavors.
2 Background
Trained as a software engineer, I have an MS in Computer Science. The
magic of mathematics, the internal organization of systems and
their relationship with the environment, drawn me early to
computers, writing my first program at the age of 14.
3 Career Trail
My professional career started in France -- I'm a French national
with Hungarian origins -- at the beginning of the 80s.
The first stints were as a system programmer in what will became my
predominant domain of activity: research and development for software
publishing houses. Designing and implementing software tools for
development teams creating shrink-wrapped business oriented products,
made the foundation of my professional life.
Later, I took up the management of a methodology, procedures and tools
division for a financial software publishing house. Managing, guiding
and tutoring engineers engaged in the support of the life cycle for a
large offering for small and medium companies.
After dwelling in information retrieval, the energy industry and
mobile telecommunication as a systems architect, the natural evolution
brought me at the head of the research and development division for a
multi-cultural company providing products for content delivery
networks.
Since the end of the Internet frenzy, I managed the research and
development division for various software publishers in the financial
and document production domains.
Despite the vertical variety of application domains, my specialization
is horizontal: software engineering.
4 Technical Profile
If there is something which could concisely characterize my technical
profile is Open Systems and Free Software.
Since the beginning of my professional activity, I had the luck to
work with numerous Unix implementations, from BSD and Xenix,
to Solaris and AIX, passing through HP-UX and Linux.
The level of acquaintance gained from this is quite intimate, in part
thanks to many iterations in reading the enlightening Design
of The Unix Operating System [bib] by
Maurice J. Bach.
Given the heterogeneity of the IT environment, I had to wander, quite
often, through the arcades of VMS, MS-DOS and their
Windows descendants, in all their splendors.
The need to interconnect these systems made me familiar with the
network protocols, on many layers, as TCP/IP and
HTTP, just to name a few.
Programming languages are part of my more general interest in
linguistics. Even wrote some, used internally in different projects,
perusing lex/flex and yacc/bison.
In those periods, the Dragon
Book[bib] is a mandatory (re)reading.
As many of my colleagues starting their professional career at the
beginning of the 80s, I was introduced to the universally terse but
generally efficient C language by copiously reading the
White Book[bib]by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie. Well, it changed my practice
from assembler, FORTRAN or COBOL.
The following years and many lines of C code, were used for a better
understanding of operating systems, by Rochkind's Advanced Unix
Programming[bib], and software tools by Plaugher's classic[bib]. The
traps and falls of this period were avoided thanks to Andrew
Koening[bib].
I discovered Smalltalk and the object oriented paradigm around 1985.
Reading the seminal book by Brad Cox, Object Oriented Programming, An
evolutionary Approach[bib]convinced me and my colleagues to buy into software integrated
components and a C++ license from AT&T, consequently meeting
Bjarne Stroustroup, unfortunately only through his
books[bib][bib]...
The object oriented paradigm was a companion through many years of,
not only coding, but also designing. Yourdon and Coad methods where my
friends[bib][bib]. Later,
UML gently replaced their
models[bib]. One of the way
of exercising my knowledge in UML was to write a full design
tool in Java for one of my customers in the energy industry -- this
was in 1995, well before Together or Poseidon, but slightly after
Rational Rose.
Depending on the projects in which I was involved, I made forays in
other languages: Lisp, PostScript,
TEX[bib] and
LATEX[bib], scripting in sh, ksh,
bash and Perl, etc.
Almost everything in my activities needs, at a moment or another,
configuration management. Many systems vaunting their prowess entered
in my usage, from SCCS to CVS, passing through
NSE, with it's magnificent Translucent File System, and
SourceSafe... I always come back to CVS. Well,
subversion has some nice features and integration with other
software engineering tools which brought me to using it in some projects.
I'm an enthusiastic proponent of Emacs, although vi it's an
old buddy.
Working in the information retrieval domain brought me close to the
data management arena, where I fought along numerous incarnations of
RDBMS.
On the methodology side, I implemented in the research and development
organizations that I managed, various life cycle approaches, such as
ISO 12207, RUP and the CMM.
As a last note, I'm a long date and still fervent reader of Knuth's
writings. Even the religious ones -- they have so nice illustrations.
5 Types of mission
The types of mission where I feel efficient, are:
- Operational management and team building.
- Technology strategy and audit for emerging software organizations
in relation with investment funds.
- Product management.
- Software publishing.
- Architecture of information systems.
- Object Oriented analysis, design and implementation.
- Fundamental software engineering.
- Porting and packaging of complex projects.
- Audit, optimization and security for system software.
- Training and coaching.
6 Languages
Born in a multi-cultural family, having lived in different
countries and working for international companies, gave me the
opportunity to master 4 European languages.
My interest in linguistics, brought me near ancient cultures and their
magnificent languages.
7 Professional Organizations
A long date member of Association for Computing
Machinery.
8 More information
If you want to dig in the details, you can ask for my curriculum vitae
and, if it's important for you, even a photo will be sent... Just use
the contact information available on this site.
As you can see in the menus situated at the top and the bottom of this
page, there is also a
French
version of
this document.
Footnotes
- ... books1
- All the cited books
have a link toward a more general
bibliography.
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