Ron Newman
18 Day Street #310
Somerville, MA 02144
Home Phone: (617) 628-8895
E-mail: rnewman@thecia.net
Objective
To join a team developing well-tested and well-documented web-based applications using Ruby, Rails, and related technologies.
Technical Background
- Programming Languages
- Ruby, PHP, Javascript, SQL, Perl, C, Java, C++
- Technologies
- Ruby on Rails, Apache with PHP and mod_perl, MySQL, HTML, XML, JSP, Linux, Unix, XSL, X Window System
Education
- 1979 B.S., Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- 2009 Building Web-Based Software With Ruby on Rails, Harvard Extension School
- 2009 Building Dynamic Websites, Harvard Summer School
- 2003 Introduction to Database Systems and Client/Server Computing, Harvard Extension School
- 2002 Web Development Using XML, Harvard Extension School
Experience
2004-2009: Merrill Lextranet
Software Engineer
One of the developers of Everest, a Ruby-based system that processes legal discovery documents and associated metadata received in a variety of electronic formats. Everest makes the documents and data accessible by Merrill's Lextranet litigation support system.Wrote automated tests to ensure that existing Everest functionality remained correct when new features were added to the software.
Implemented Auditron, a Perl program to check the consistency of the Lextranet file system and database. Auditron runs each night to ensure that the previous day's Everest runs did not introduce errors into the Lextranet database.
Wrote C extensions to Ruby in order to interface with external C libraries and improve performance of frequently-used Ruby code.
1999-2002: Northern Light Technology
Senior Software Engineer
Designed, implemented, and maintained Common Gateway Interface (CGI) applications for customer access to various aspects of an Internet search engine. These programs were written primarily in Perl and ran on the Apache web server.Assisted in the implementation of Northern Light Search Alerts, which sent e-mail whenever the Northern Light databases were updated with new documents matching search terms chosen by users.
Designed and implemented several HTTP-based applications programming interfaces (APIs) for access to Northern Light's accounts and Search Alert databases.
1995-1999: Banta Integrated Media
Software Engineer
Designed and implemented software used in CGI web applications for a variety of commercial customers, including TWA and The Wine Spectator. This software included:
- A database, built on top of the Unix NDBM package
- An API for parsing CGI query strings, and turning these strings automatically into queries against the database
- An API for generating HTML from template files at runtime, substituting the values of variables and generating call-backs to C functions.
- A moderated chat system for The Wine Spectator web site.
1994: MIT Media Laboratory
Research Specialist
Assisted Professor Ken Haase in implementing, maintaining, and documenting Framer, an object-oriented database used to store and annotate the contents of news articles. The program included an interpreter for Fraxl, a variant of Scheme.
- Rewrote the Framer programmer's manual.
- Implemented new features, fixed bugs, and ensured that the implementation conformed to both established Scheme standards and its own published specification.
- Served as a liaison between Professor Haase and Framer users within the Lab, helping them diagnose problems and implementing bug fixes where needed.
1991-1993: Bolt, Beranek & Newman Software Products Division
Software Engineer
A member of the team that developed Cornerstone, a statistical software product, on the Sun SPARCstation and HP700.
- Helped implement the product's user interface on top of X11R4, Motif 1.1, Ithaca Software's HOOPS graphics library, and the public-domain Widget Creation (Wcl) and X PixMap (Xpm) libraries.
- Acted as liaison between BBNSPD and two suppliers, Open Software Foundation and Ithaca Software. Diagnosed, reported, and tracked bugs in the Motif and HOOPS software libraries. Installed and tested new releases of these packages and integrated them into the Cornerstone product.
1988-1991: Lotus Development Corporation
Senior Programmer
Worked on versions of 1-2-3 Release 3.0 for a variety of platforms, including the IBM PC under DOS and OS/2, the DEC VAX under VMS, the Sun Workstation, and UNIX System V for 80386-based machines.
- Developed a graph driver for the X Window System for VMS and Unix.
- Developed an assembly-language floating-point math driver for IBM PC to support the Intel 80287 and 80387 coprocessors on MS-DOS and OS/2.
- Developed C-language floating-point math drivers to interface with the VMS and Unix math libraries.
1984-1988: Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Project Athena
Systems Programmer
One of the early developers of the X Window System, from its initial versions used only at MIT, through X Version 11 Release 2 (X11R2).
- Part of the team at MIT that coordinated the development and release of X Version 11. This work included: re-implementing the Xlib C language interface, client programs, and portions of the server; debugging and testing; integrating code developed outside MIT; and processing bug reports from external alpha and beta sites. Took special responsibility for ensuring that clients and servers running on different hardware architectures worked together properly.
- Co-author of the Xlib--C Language X Interface manual distributed with X Versions 10 and 11. This manual became part of the X Window System C Library and Protocol Reference book published by Digital Press.
- Had primary responsibility for implementing 'Xlib', the C language interface to the X Window System. Also developed a bitmap editor and other clients of the window system.
- Participated in the design of the protocol specification for X Version 11.
- Wrote a package that allowed clients of Carnegie-Mellon's 'Andrew' window system to run in an X Version 10 window. This package helped highlight deficiencies of Version 10 which were remedied in Version 11, allowing the Andrew implementors to migrate their code to X.
1979-1984: Xerox Office Systems Division, El Segundo, CA
Systems Programmer
Participated in implementing the Xerox Star workstation software, the first commercial product to feature a mouse, windows, and graphical user interface.
- Wrote a simple string-backed text editor, primarily for use in a forms package. The editor handled multiple character sets including Hebrew, Arabic, and Kanji.
- Helped develop a hierarchical file system for the Star workstation. Task included developing a remote file access protocol based on the 'Courier' remote procedure call protocol. Also developed a file system repair program.
- Programmed extensions to mail, debugging, and other subsystems of the Xerox Mesa Development Environment.