Jef Poskanzer's Résumé

Objective

Technically challenging software development either in the Berkeley area or via telecommuting.

Skills

Expert in: Unix, C, C++, JavaScript, Java, shell scripting, HTTP, web server design, CGI, HTML, image file formats, PC hardware.

Proficient in: XML, TCP/IP, netnews, SMTP, user interface design, protocol design, API design, 2-D graphics algorithms, geographic algorithms, PostScript, FreeBSD sysadmin, firewalls and network security.

Work Experience

For the last few years I have been alternating full-time work and consulting, plus some development projects of my own when I have the time. For example:

• A tutorial on mail filtering.
• thttpd, a fast and small HTTP server. It's intended to be efficient enough for the highest-traffic sites, while still small and simple enough for a single-page home server. It's currently the fifth most popular web server on the net.
• A few other web servers, including this very small one, this ridiculously small one, and this one in Java.
• Numerous widely-used utility programs such as http_load, http_ping, weblog_parse, mini_sendmail, and select.
• A guide to building a PC, including a database of motherboards.
• A CGI-based conferencing system.
• The Label Maker, the License Maker, and the Heart Maker.
• An image format conversion package called pbmplus. It consists of about 35,000 lines of code, and I'm distributing it for free. About 65% of the code is my own - the rest is contributed by others, which has given me a lot of experience cleaning up and debugging other people's code.
• Helping The River get started - it's a yapp-based conferencing system, cooperatively owned, flat rate, supported by volunteers so far. I installed or wrote most of the software they're using.

I have also produced some interesting graphics and sound demos, a miniature X11 toolkit, and lots of fun PostScript graphics. I've also done some experimenting with ray tracing, computerized map making, high-speed netnews transfer protocols, interfacing to alphanumeric paging systems, and lots more.

Some of the more interesting consulting projects: adding pbmplus to a video frame-grabber system so that it could save and read dozens of different file formats; some X11/InterViews work and graphics hacking for a major network management system; installing a new netnews system at a large company.

Other jobs:

I returned to LBNL for a part-time temporary position where I worked on a network analysis tool called iperf3. My tasks were to improve the software's performance and reliability, and get it ready for release.

WaveMarket provides location-based services software for cellphones, using both Java and C++. I worked mostly on the server side. My most interesting project was writing a new web server in C++ providing a Servlet interface very similar to the Java one.

A startup involved in high-performance internet servers and protocols, especially streaming video. My task was to improve and tune a general-purpose HTTP server, using technology from my freeware thttpd server. The result was verified by a third-party test as the fastest web server in the world.

RTS makes hardware and software for automating large distribution warehouses. The software is basically a hugely complicated real-time database. I worked mostly on the X11/Tk-based user interface programs, and also do general system-level programming and support - shell scripts, DNS maintenance, NetBlazer/ISDN/SLIP work, etc.

Finished a port of Z-Code's Motif-based email program to OpenLook (just in time for Sun to give up on OpenLook!). Finished a Motif-based fax system (incoming & outgoing, client/server organization, shell interfaces as well as GUI). General maintenance programming.

At Sybase I was part of a team of three engineers, designing a new window system to support Sybase's database front end. The design drew heavily on my experience with the X window system.

I was UniSoft's resident graphics hacker, working on porting the X Window System to UNIX System V on various machines. I participated in MIT's alpha and beta tests for X version 11. I also did general bug-fixes on UniPlus+, the UNIX System V product that is UniSoft's main business.

My last project at UniSoft was porting X11 to the Mac II, running A/UX. Porting the clients, library, and server took me a total of three weeks.

I was hired to write systems and graphics software for a high-powered presentation graphics workstation based on two 68020 processors and a smart frame buffer. I got to do a few interesting projects, such as designing a simple but powerful window/user-input manager; designing and implementing a file format for compressed bitmaps; and prototyping a font package. I also wrote some very nice graphics hacks.

I worked in the Engineering Information Systems division, which was writing a CAD/CAE software package called "Expert" to run on Xerox's D-machine processors using the mouse/windows/icons user interface. My work was split between the Systems group, writing common software for use by the other groups, and the Drafting group, developing a 2-D mechanical drafting package as part of a team of five programmers. My notable tasks included:

• A tape tool, for reading and writing both unlabeled and ANSI labeled tapes using a network tape server.
• A fast vector-font package using scaled integer arithmetic.
• An "overview" window allowing a Drafting user to conveniently do zooms and long-range pans without getting lost in the drawing.
• A fast library manager - sort of a miniature filesystem optimized for access speed and for many small entries.
• An IGES input/output translator.
• A photoplot tape generator with fairly good pen-motion optimization.

On my own time, I wrote about 30 different "hacks" (unsupported software distributed within Xerox). These were mostly systems-type utilities, such as a remote filesystem cache, a shell, a random number library, and a printf() clone. However, I enjoy doing real-time animated graphics, so I also wrote a lot of entertainment software - a bitmap animation tool, a lunar-lander game, some 3-D stuff, etc.

I worked in the Real Time Systems Group, which designs, builds, and maintains real-time control systems for various research projects in the lab and around the country. At the time, we specialized in three types of computers: PDP-11s, Vaxes, and Modcomps. My first task at RTSG was to port Kernighan & Plauger's "Software Tools" to the Modcomps. Some of my other projects:

• A uniform operator interface for LBL's neutral beam control systems, based on a series of menus on a touch-sensitive display.
• Some modifications to an elaborate real-time data-acquisition program (MULTI) used in nuclear science.
• A simple data-acquisition program for a geophysics experiment, which also did some closed-loop feedback control.
• A detailed simulation for the design of a positron-emission tomography system.
• A "lexical analyser generator" very similar to UNIX's "lex", which eventually evolved into Vern Paxson's excellent "flex".
• Training groups of computer science students from Jackson State University, Mississippi, who visited LBL every so often in a cooperative arrangement.

In between the major projects, I did a lot of development on the Software Tools, including writing a portable screen editor and an early real-time multi-player space war game called Conquest (available through DECUS).

Other jobs: in 1979, grader for a second-year computer science course at Carnegie-Mellon; in 1978, a summer job writing disk drivers for Cm*, an early experimental multi-processor; in 1977, a summer job at LBL modifying an electron-optics simulation on a CDC-7600; in 1975, a small database for keeping track of textbooks at my high school; in 1972, a character generator routine written in PDP-8 assembler.

Awards

Usenix 1993 Lifetime Achievement Award for work on BSD Unix
Usenix 1996 Lifetime Achievement Award for work on Software Tools

Education

My major was "Applied Math, Computer Science A (Software)". I studied both math and computer science. The more interesting courses I took include Combinatorics, Graph Theory, Computer Graphics, Compiler Design, Software Engineering, and Artificial Intelligence.

Between my third and fourth years of High School, I took one course at U.C. Berkeley. It was called "Machine Structures", and it dealt with assembly language programming for the Control Data 6000/7000 series, and for PDP-11s.

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