Of Programming and Architecture

Introducing Bill Kayser

Bill holds a Masters in Computer Science from Stanford University. He has more than 20 years of experience with object technology and languages including C++, Smalltalk and Java (he’s a certified Java programmer and architect). He has served as a member of Sun JCP expert groups on RMI Custom Remote References (JSR78) and EJB Performance Benchmarking (JSR131). His career spans IBM, Schlumberger (on oilfield applications), WorldStreet Corporation (on financial applications, as Chief Architect) and SupplyChainge (again as Chief Architect) At SupplyChainge, Bill interacted with Nagarro and visited Delhi as well. After SupplyChainge, Bill joined the very successful application performance management company Wily Technology, which was acquired by Computer Associates in early 2006 for a large sum. He currently works on the Wily Introscope™ product. He is also the co-founder of StepZero, LLC, a performance management consulting firm. He collaborates informally with many open source gurus including Ward Cunningham, the father of the Wiki.

But you’ll seldom hear him talk about himself. He is modest to a fault, which is one of his endearing qualities.

There are other interesting sides to Bill. In 1996, he took a six month sabbatical to sail as a deck hand on the tall ship HMS Rose, scrubbing decks and rigging up sails. He plays soccer fanatically and has badly scarred knees to show for it. Plus he’s often up to something fun – one day we played a prank on his sister, calling her with exaggerated Indian accents, telling her that we were calling from Dell Service Center in Bangalore, and that she should be careful while using her computer because it “might catch fire”.

Bill lives in Portland, Oregon with his British wife Crista, two-year old son Felix, and Boris the cat.

Anyway, Bill has agreed to write a series of articles exclusively for Nagarro that talk about the philosophy of programming and architecture. The first article of the series, titled “The Literacy of Programs” will be out tomorrow. Over time, we might put new articles up on a Wiki or a blog (internal or external?) and then you can discuss the articles directly with Bill. If you have any ideas of how we should structure this Wiki/blog, or you can volunteer to set it up, please do write to me. Plus if you want to write a note to Bill at any time, you can do so at bill@kayser.org.

We are excited by this initiative and look forward to seeing how this will work out.