Hi Peoples, I've been a lurker here for about a year. I joined after watching a YOW keynote presentation by Jeff Hawkings in Brisbane, Australia (Dec. 2013).
I've always planned on getting involved, unfortunately both work and some external projects have kept me busy. My intention is to get involved when I finish my current project. My background is quite varied, though mainly a tad boring as my professional career has been focused on business software. I started in the late 80s working for CCH using various languages, mainly Cobol, C, C++, Clipper (a DBV derivative). Most of the 90s was spent working in Progress for an ERP solution called MFG/PRO. During this time I also did some C/C++ work, mainly for handhelds and also introduced myself to Java (with some limited HTML work). Early 00s I worked on quite a few different technologies. Some Progress, implemented YModem in Java, developed various touch UIs using Java (including generic MJPeg adaptors, Onewire, etc) some C++ based mobile solutions and media streaming. Mid to late 00s I switched roles and companies and became an Architect, so my hands on day to day work in programming ceased. However in my own time I continued to work in Java (mainly touch screens). In the 10s I went to Uni to do a Masters in IT. I focused on Interaction Design and did a number of major and minor projects. This being the lead author on a paper (IEEE published) around cross platform multi-touch interfaces interacting simultaneously with multiple UAVs. This involved a proof of concept that I wrote mainly HTML5, CSS3 and node.js. I also did some PHP work, mainly importing PPTx files into Drupal. Lately I've been working on a node.js driven HTML5 front end around 10 foot interfaces to visualise KPI information (called Vor). When I finish Vor I plan to do some work in the area of robotics, specifically autonomous robots. Areas that interest me is collaboration, swarms and object recognition. I'm especially interested in object relations and attributes as an approach to machine intelligence and action determination for object recognition (apologies if my terms are off, I'm still new to this field). I'm very interested in robotic assistance for people with limited mobility. So I expect that I will not be active in this community until the later half of this year. Cheers, James Jenner +61 402 203 344 [email protected] On 12 April 2015 at 04:08, Matthew Taylor <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm seeing many new faces in our community, and I keep wondering about > the skill sets you folks have. Does anyone want to describe their > technical programming prowess? Here is your chance to brag about your > history. I'll go first ;)... > > > I started seriously programming around 2002 in PHP and FORTRAN77, > believe it or not. I had taken no college classes at all at the time, > but I was an analyst at a company that was doing lots of complex > military defense simulations in FORTRAN. I was doing PHP as a hobby > and learning relational databases in MySQL (when it was free as in > beer). > > I finally went to school and learned Java while I was working on Java > wrappers to our FORTRAN applications so scientists, engineers, and > pilots could actually use the simulations without intense technical > help. This involved a lot of Swing GUI work, so I started getting more > into front-end technology at that time. > > I quit my job and moved to St. Louis to work as a freelance software > contractor, landing almost entirely Java jobs for several years, but > getting a breadth of experience in some diverse fields, but always > supporting scientific research in some way. Jobs working for banks are > boring. ;) > > Then I got into Groovy, a functional and dynamically typed JVM > language with very tight integration with Java. This really piqued my > interested in functional programming, and I got involved in the Lambda > Lounge group that was just starting up [1]. We were mostly disgruntled > Java programmers who wanted to work in more interesting language > paradigms, and I believe we changed the programming landscape in St. > Louis to be much more polyglot. > > Somehow I networked with the right people and got a job for G2One, a > startup that included the founders of the Groovy language and the > Grails web framework. At this time, I was working a bit on Grails > itself, and implementing a GUI plugin that integrated Javascript as a > collection of server-side pages, so backend programmers didn't have to > mess around with the JS (this was before Javascript was considered a > "serious" programming language to most people). > > Then SpringSource bought G2One (I was a contractor, so I didn't get a > payoff), and I was laid off after 6 months. Eventually VMWare bought > SpringSource, Pivotal took over all the Groovy Grails stuff, and then > dropped it all and it moved to the Apache Foundation. Anyway I still > have a good relationship with all the Groovy/Grails folks, and I still > have a deep-seeded love for the elegant Groovy language. > > During my time working on GrailsUI (the Grails Javascript plugin), I > worked extensively with YUI, the Yahoo! User Interface Javascript > library. So I emailed the YUI time a bit and got to know them, which > was great because David Glass helped me get a job at Yahoo! and I > moved my entire family from St. Louis to Cupertino. > > I worked at Yahoo! for 2 years maintaining and building Javascript > frameworks. I learned a lot about Javascript, and that helped me get a > job as a Frontend Engineer at Numenta. When Numenta approached me, I > was really surprised, because I'd been a follower for a long time > (since reading On Intelligence), and I had always dreamed of working > on something I thought was so important. > > So I went from F2E at Numenta to Manager of Web Services, helping > build out REST APIs and such. Then when Numenta got the open source > bug, I jumped at the chance to help make open source NuPIC a reality. > And here I am. :) > > [1] http://lambdalounge.org/ > > Who's next? > > --------- > Matt Taylor > OS Community Flag-Bearer > Numenta > >
