Professional: Work

My "Career" is Programmer and Technical Writer. A lot of what I do outside of my job is related to those interests.

I work with the computer (play with the computer), collect software, try things out. I've currently got a Power Macintosh G3 and a Handspring Visor Deluxe (Palm OS). I'm partial to "techie toys".

My professional interests include

• Development and maintenance of programming tools and data filters
• Programming, primarily using scripting languages such as Perl or MacPerl, awk, or the Unix shells (ksh or bash).
• Data analysis
• Information management and presentation
• Software quality assurance and management
• Design and implementation of reproducible processes
• Scientific programming and bioinformatics
• Support, documentation, training, and user services
• Technical writing and editing
• The Internet; Web and HTML applications
• Working with the Unix operating system and utilities, and with variants thereof, such as FreeBSD and the GNU System
• Working with the Mac OS

Take a look at some of my technical bookmarks...

I write code for personal projects, mostly in Perl these days, although I used to use awk a lot (awk is a nice little language available with Unix systems). I am impatiently waiting for the port of Perl to the Palm computer :-)

While I have coded C "for fun and profit", C is not my programming language of choice. I prefer the higher level languages: shell (sh or better yet ksh or bash; C shell only if I have no other options :-)), awk and, most recently, Perl. I began learning Perl a few years ago and it has become my preferred programming language. I especially like the fact that, using MacPerl, I can write "real" code on my Mac, without resorting to fancy development systems and C compilers!

I work on web pages. I'm not a Graphic Designer, however, and I prefer working directly with the HTML code to using a "WYSIWYG" Web page editor. But I have fun. I've done the pages for The MacPerl Pages and The San Francisco Perl Users Group and a few internal websites for jobs I've had. I did the original pages for Apple's MkLinux project, but those have since been replaced :-( I do all of my own pages, of course.

I enjoy technical writing (and it's a way to get my name in lights :-) I have written several articles for various publications. I'm trying to do more of this, but it takes a lot of time and energy. I've also co-authored a book on MacPerl), and I'm (slowly) working on another book project.

I tell people that Unix is my favorite OS; MacOS is my favorite interface. I've been using Unix since 1983; it's always made sense to me. Prior to that my relationship to the computers I used was punch cards, IBM mainframes, and FORTRAN.

I was introduced to MacOS System 6 in 1986 when I went to work for Apple's A/UX team. An early slip of the tongue for me was to complain that "If Mac OS were a real operating system...". Mac OS System 7 was a BIG improvement. Using the Mac interface with A/UX (Unix system V/BSD hybrid underneath, System 7 on top) I fell in love. Then the A/UX project was canceled, Mac OS was updated, and finally my disk crashed -- I replaced the whole thing with a PowerMac 7100 and Mac OS 7.5 (with first a Sun and then a FreeBSD system in our laundry room as a Unix back-end server).

Rich and I both have been using only Mac on the desktop for years (it took a little while for me to convince him, until one day he saw me drag a window between two screens and was hooked :-) We both maintain telnet sessions into the FreeBSD system at all times.

I'm the Poweruser in the household. I do more of my development work on the Mac - BBEdit, MacPerl, ClarisWorks. Rich still more of his editing with vi under FreeBSD. But both of us adhere to the motto "you can have my Mac when you pry my cold dead fingers off the mouse".

*nix (Unix, Solaris, BSD, Linux, whatever) excels at batch-mode programming and text processing. If you want to write a quick program, run it across a lot of files, run it in background, you need
*nix. *nix systems also excel at stability, reliability, and improved memory management.

Mac OS excels at ease of use. Unix has had X windows for years; Mac OS is more mature, more consistent, cleaner, better feel. Apple actually designed their interface; X11 just grew and was cobbled together. Can you tell that I dislike X11 with some intensity??

The combination of MacOS ease of use and application environment (can't edit a picture on Unix) with *nix's memory management, stability (*nix boxes do NOT crash twice a day, or even once a week!), batch mode processing, ease of programming, and zillions of little tools, makes a powerful combination.

Mac OS X is a Good Direction for Apple to go (even though they made the wrong decision on case-sensitivity :-(

My resume is available online. My job history is chronicled in my Work pages.