Subject: Re: G'day from Down Under
From: Ken_Dickey (kend@memetrics.com)
Date: Tue Nov 21 2000 - 18:00:13 EST
Shriram Krishnamurthi wrote:
> I've posted to comp.lang.scheme.
>
> Mitch Wand hosts a mailing list for PL-related topics, which sometimes
> features job postings that might interest its audience. Yours fits
> the bill, and I expect Mitch and others in the community would be
> happy to hear what you're up to. If you want to post to them, they
> are at
>
> pl-seminar@ccs.neu.edu
Ah yes. Whatever did happen to Ken Dickey?
Well, it's a long story. The short version is: I was working in a small company (MicroTek) primarily using theActor language (follow-on to Neon, think Smaltlk with C syntax--no relation to actor semantics). I had started what I intended to be a series of popular articles on Scheme when I got hired into Apple to bring up Dylan on the Newton OS. Apple took up all my time The Dylan toolbox for Newton was great. We could do things in minutes which took the C++ guys days to do. The tools group kept begging us to implement source level dynamic debugging for C++. Yea, nice idea but wrong target. The Dylan toolbox group got killed off due to internal Apple politics and I worked briefly in Interactive TV, did some investigations of dynamic runtimes for Multimedia development (Scheme, Smalltalk, Oak=Java, Obliq, Python, Clean, etc., etc.).
I worked on the SK8 multimedia development investigations in Apple's research lab. SK8 was an environment and repository which presented the join of all screens as a Stage and presented a large number of pallets for drag' n drop media usage. It was used by media developers as opposed to programmers and was designed to be easy to use. You could select an object and see its Properties, then [a] select one, e.g. fill-color, and pick from select lists, [b] drop a color or Renderer (picture,movie, algorithmic) on it or [c] set it via the repl/command line. The SK8 core was written in Common Lisp but the SK8Script user language was used for most of the UI and for user development. SK8Script was AppleScript/English like: i.e. "set the fill color of all red rectangles on the stage to green" so the user didn't have to know much about looping forms. Along with SK8Script compiler work I wrote a project "extruder" which walked a live project, ordering parents to children (SK8Script was prototype based) and wrote th
e code to recreate the project. We had back ends for SK8Script, ScriptX, and Java, so I was involved in doing the "impedence matching" runtime work for ScriptX (Kaleida's cross-platform MultiMedia delivery system--which I was also involved with) and Java. And I did various random work on AppleScript, AppleWorks, Java Debugger support for MacOS X, etc.
After 7+ years at Apple I realized that I had worked on projects using 68K, ARM, PPC assembler, C, C++, ObjectiveC, Scheme, Smalltalk, Dylan, Java, NewtonScript, SK8Script, ScriptX, AppleScript, and done investigations in a half dozen or so other languages.
After being in crunch-mode for a year and shipping product I asked my managenent for a month off and they refused, so I quit Apple, took 4 months off and noted this interesting advert from a company in Australia. I had never been to Australia. I said "wow, it sounds interesting but I just have too many commitments in the states to come". They said "just come down for 2-3 months to help us get started". Anyway, I just couldn't pass it up. Now I'm here and involved, and (now) CTO and... do ya know of any good LIsp Programmers who would like to see Syndey? We're doing some real interesting stuff. [www.memetrics.com].
So that's the short story.
Oh, yes, I am still doing things "on the side". A guy named Dave Simmons who has done over a half dozen Smalltalk VMs is developing a small (600KB) SmallScript runtime and would like a Scheme compiler for it [don't tell my boss! ;^]. The Smalltalk selectors are "scoped by name space" so you can have, e.g. CAR in the Scheme0 not conflict with a user's definition of CAR as DeSoto in a natural way, etc. Multimethods, machine-independent object collection import/export. Yadda, yadda. [www.qks.com]
> In the event I find a qualified undergrad who'd like to head off to
> Sydney, I'll pass them on. I've posted about the opening to my
> programming language course's mailing list.
Much appreciated.
>
> I don't suppose you are interested in summer interns from the US?
Sorry, pre-ipo startups have a hard time finding proper work for interns. Perhaps a year's sabbatical in Sydney? We _are_ happy to have a job candidate out for a 3 month contract. Kinda like dating before marrage. It reduces the risk. You don't have to make a commitment to come half way around the world for a job and Memetrics gets to see how you fit into the community. Great people here! [Sell, sell 8^].
Oh, yes. It is good if you can learn programming languages. ;^)
Cheers,
-KenD
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