Dr. Dobb's Journal - February 2009 - (Page 12)

d02Devdiary_p2ds 12/11/08 1:05 PM Page 12 Developer Diaries edited by Michael Swaine Scratching the Itch Stephan Beal Employer: Self Job: Freelance programmer DDJ: Where do you work? SB: I’m an American who works in Germany. DDJ: What’s your job there? SB: I work professionally as a freelance programmer and/or UNIX administrator, but only so I can pay for my “real” job, which is programming free/open source code. I code up Driving Robots On Mars John Wright Employer: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Job: Driving robots on Mars DDJ: What’s your job there at JPL? JW: Driving robots on Mars and developing the software for driving robots on Mars. DDJ: What do you find challenging about your job? JW: Working on a wide variety of projects requiring a diverse set of skills. One day it’s stereo image processing and the next it’s satellitebased radar mapping, followed by user-interface design. DDJ: What have you found that makes your job easier? JW: There are a whole lot of smart people here. If you listen to them, somebody will certainly have something to contribute to your problem. Don’t be afraid to ask. Your turn to be asked will come. DDJ: What’s your hobby? JW: Windsurfing. 12 anything that scratches an itch. My first love is C++, my second is currently C, but I’ve also done more than my fair share of Java and PHP work. DDJ: What do you like about your job? SB: The freedom to create. The rush of sharing ideas with other developers, and seeing those ideas come to life. DDJ: What do you find challenging about your job? SB: Finding good documentation ;) . Seriously, so much software is poorly documented. I’m a stickler for API docs. DDJ: What have you found that makes your job easier? SB: Konsole (or similar), Bash (or equivalent), GNU Make (there is no equivalent), and XEmacs (again, there is no equivalent). DDJ: What’s your hobby? SB: Programming, programming, programming. Bringing Open Source to Wall Street Yoram Talmor Employer: Marketcetera Job: VP of Engineering DDJ: What’s your job there? YT: I am vice president of engineering at Marketcetera, the first commercially available open-source algorithmic trading platform. My main job is leading the Engineering team as we build out our platform for our official launch in Q4 of 2008. DDJ: What do you like about your job? YT: Marketcetera is at the intersection between the open-source software world and the finance world. It has the opportunity to significantly change the way software is used and adopted in that industry. I like being a part of a company that has the ability to make those fundamental changes. I also really enjoy Marketcetera’s corporate culture—though at 10 employees and growing, nothing about it feels “corporate.” There is a group excitement that I haven’t encountered before which comes from serving one of the most demanding customer segments in the world. DDJ: What do you find challenging about your job? YT: The challenge in this job is figuring out how to build the best of its kind trading platform—easy to use yet extensible, with strict performance requirements and the right set of features. DDJ: What have you found that makes your job easier? YT: The amazing number of mature open-source tools and projects that exists today: Spring framework, ActiveMQ, QuickFIX/J, and Eclipse, just to name just a few. It’s inspiring to see how much can be achieved when people form communities and work together to solve challenging technical problems. DDJ: What’s your hobby? YT: My current main hobby is video games—I play a lot of those together with my son and daughter. I also enjoy riding my mountain bikes, though recently they have been gathering dust in my garage. Dr. Dobb’s Journal l www.ddj.com l February 2009 http://www.ddj.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Dr. Dobb's Journal - February 2009

Dr. Dobb's Journal - February 2009 Contents Friday Night Fish Fry Alia Vox Developer Diaries Conversations Computing in the Clouds Software Development in the Cloud Videos and Oracle Forms 10g Parallel LINQ Decoupling C Header Files Effective Concurrency Disciplined Agility Swaine’s Flames

Dr. Dobb's Journal - February 2009

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.