John A. Lusk
(919) 321-2885
Durham, NC 27713
email: john-resume@how-hard-can-it-be.com
(email is the preferred initial contact channel)
SUMMARY/OBJECTIVE
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Experienced Java/J2EE (and some C#/.NET) developer with a master's degree in computer science. Intelligent, creative, excellent communicator, interested in getting product to market with a minimum of hacking, team player.
My objective is to make the one-third of my life that I spend at work rewarding by working in an efficient, collaborative team environment producing something of value. I want to be able to use my current technical and leadership skills and continue to develop those skills.
EDUCATION
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* University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC - MS Computer Science, 1993
* Appalachian Trail, Georgia to Maine (2,000 miles), 1984
* Davidson College, Davidson, NC - BS Physics, 1983
EXPERIENCE
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* C# DEVELOPER, AllscriptsMisys, Raleigh, NC
Sept. 2008 - present
I designed and coded new screens (.aspx) and SQL Server stored procedures. I created designs, had them reviewed, reviewed other developers' designs, coded to the designs, assisted teammates with technical and design issues, participated in production deployments (mostly as a tester to ensure my work had been deployed properly) and performed level 3 support of my own code and others' code. I also made suggestions in the area of configuration management as we transitioned from Visual SourceSafe (locking paradigm) through Team Foundation Server to Subversion (branching/merging paradigm). Those suggestions were eventually adopted. (Note: for the last few years, I've been working on WinForms/WPF apps. I really need to update this paragraph.)
* JAVA DEVELOPER, Canopy Systems / A4 Health Systems / Allscripts, Chapel Hill/Raleigh, NC
Jan. 2000 - Aug. 2008
Joined company as a small startup (< 20 people), stayed with it through various acquisitions and mergers until it became part of a 5,000-person corporation. Worked in one product group on a small team (usually about 6 developers) developing a web application for hospital case management, utilization management and quality management. Platform was JBoss on Windows, Oracle on Linux. Contributed to configuration management process, operations toolset (perl and Cygwin bash), code infrastructure (UI/Javascript, error reporting), contributed to/fostered object-oriented design, designed and coded JSP pages, pioneered the use of JavaServer Faces (JSF). Worked with Cocoon, learning XSLT and XSL-FO to create printable PDF documents from the data stored by the webapp. Implemented a wiki (TWiki) which eventually became a central knowledge repository and remains in use today. I also used Radview's WebLoad to develop a load-testing suite used to stress-test our app.
* JAVA DEVELOPER, IBM Corp. (via Modis), Research Triangle Park, NC
Dec. 1998 - Dec. 1999
Wrote, with three other developers, a Java client to forward hardware incident alert info generated on a customer's LAN to a help center via a dialed-up connection. I used RMI for inter-process communication (IPC), since I needed an ephemeral per-incident JVM talking to a daemon JVM that was always up, managing the phone connection.
At the time I left, I was working with one other developer on a major rewrite of the server side of this project, using XML to represent data transmitted over HTTP. I came up with a design for attaching binary data to the same stream as an XML document (as opposed to simply specifying a URI and depending on the receiving client to issue further HTTP requests to resolve the references).
* UNIX/MS-WINDOWS INTEROPERABILITY DEVELOPER, Data General Corp., Research Triangle Park, NC
March 1998 - Dec. 1998
Worked on a web-based large-disk administration project for Windows NT. I participated heavily in initial design, wrote a Java GUI front end applet (using the Java Activator plug-in) and gave advice on O-O design and C++ implementation to the other two developers on the project.
* BUILD AND INTEGRATION TOOLS DEVELOPER, BUILD COORDINATOR, Data General Corp., Research Triangle Park, NC
May 1994 - March 1998
Enhanced/developed Unix shell (bash) and Perl scripts to provide development environment for Unix kernel developers and integration tools for software release management. This included first-customer-ship versions and patches. We managed several shipping versions of product, and several versions in development at any one time.
I was the maintainer and administrator of the problem-tracking system used for our Unix products. It was implemented in shell and Perl scripts, and had a web-based front end, on which I did significant work.
Served as Unix (DG/UX) "kernel dumpbuster" for 4 months. This entailed receiving dumps of crashed Unix kernels and doing sufficient initial analysis to make a determination of who to route the problem to. I was also requested to create a new build process as part of our transition from COFF (common object file format) to ELF (extended link format) binaries. Doing so required me to familiarize myself with link tools ('ld,' in this case) and the details of how our kernel was laid out, with wired, swappable and discardable memory. I created an innovative design and discovered a minor bug in 'ld,' the fix for which was folded into the product.
As build coordinator, I performed the daily operations necessary to ensure clean nightly builds, cut passes of the product for testing or shipment, and cut patches for already-shipped versions.
* GRADUATE STUDENT, TEACHING ASSISTANT, RESEARCH ASSISTANT, UNC Dept. of Computer Science
Dec. 1991 - Dec. 1993
For two years as a TA, gave recitations once a week in undergrad CS courses. Graded program assignments and tests. For one and a half years as an RA, performed DEC Ultrix, SunOS system administration, help desk duties.
* FULL-TIME EVENING COLLEGE STUDENT, UNC-Chapel Hill
Sept. 1989 - Aug. 1990
Ramped up for CS grad school 6 years after getting a BS in Physics at Davidson College. Interesting story: applied to grad school, was rejected, called them to ask why, was told I needed to show more serious commitment by taking some courses such as by being an Evening College student (which is their "returning adult" program), so I quit my job in Greensboro, moved to Chapel Hill, got good grades and reapplied (successfully).
* TECHNICAL SUPPORT PROGRAMMER, APPLICATIONS PROGRAMMER, Cone Mills Corp., Greensboro, NC
May 1985 - Sept. 1989
On Burroughs A-series mainframes, for two years as a tech support programmer, I provided technical support and developed printing and other "infrastructure" software in ALGOL. For two years as an applications programmer, I developed databases and applications in a 4GL (LINC) for the mainframes.
* APPALACHIAN TRAIL THRU-HIKER, Georgia to Maine
Apr. 1984 - Oct. 1984
Learned what "hard work," "persistence," "the great outdoors," and "you have a friend in Pennsylvania" really mean. (No hidden story, the people I met were simply friendly.)
* ASSISTANT SYSTEMS OPERATOR, Davidson College, Davidson, NC
June 1983 - Apr. 1984
Similar to my tech. support duties at Cone Mills. On Prime 750s, performed system backups, some system admin, developed system login-accounting software in FORTRAN IV, computer-based testing software in PL/1.
KEYWORDS
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Here are some more keywords for your search engine, indicating areas in which I have some expertise: X-Windows (the subject of my master's thesis), Pascal, Eiffel, Smalltalk, APL, Postscript, Emacs Lisp, Haskell, functional programming.