Resume for Gary Propp

Email me at [email protected]
See me at http://members.aol.com/garypropp

Objectives

To work as a software engineer. To create software products through research, customer interviews and personal innovation. To act as team leader or team member that designs, documents, implements and tests software. To feel accomplishment and pride in releasing high quality products that meet customers needs. To work in the Minneapolis/St.Paul, Minnesota area.

Accomplishments

Receives excellence awards

Sandy Rowe, general manager of Electronic Commerce development, presented excellence award for work done for Ford Motor Company contract. [1997]

Received technical excellence award. Control Data Corporations (CDC) Vice President of Engineering Systems and Services Gil Williams award letter stated "Your design and implementation of a NOS/VE screen formatting product that positions Control Data with one of the best user screen interfaces in the industry is a significant achievement." I wrote a large portion of the 68,000 lines of screen formatting code. Directed people who wrote an additional 91,000 lines of tests. Received Macintosh computer for award. [1986]

 

Receives manager praise

Ruth Dessel stated "Gary is self motivating and directed individual and works with a minimal supervision. Readily shares information in support of team goals."

Doug Panash wrote "... Gary drove himself to achieve the release milestones."

Jim Krautbauer proclaimed " He undertook aggressive challenges and still delivered his product by the required dates."

Seldon Fewer said "Highly motivated. A hard worker who always provides extra effort."

 

Designs operating systems

Solved problems developing a complex operating system called NOS/VE consisting of over 2,500,000 lines of code. Member of design team (8 people) who set design direction for 75 programmers. Sheldon Fewer, the manager of the design team, stated "Design analysis is a strength. Develops realistic solutions." [1980-1985]

 

Designs transaction system

Designed transaction processing for Network Operating System (NOS). Work resulted in promotion to consultant. Member of NOS design team that directed work of programmers. [1976-1979]

 

Presents products to customers

Gave presentation on new user interfaces for Mail*Hub to customers and analysts. The session was video taped. [1995].

Manager Ruth Dessel said "Very customer conscious. Responsive to customer needs and problems. Drives hard to ensure critical customer situations are resolved in a timely manner." [1990]

Made presentations for CDC's winning effort in a contract projected as 360 million dollars for the Army Corps of Engineers . [1989]

Described the benefits of screen formatting to CDC analysts and customers in presentations given in Europe and U.S. [1986]

Manager Doug Pansh wrote "Gary continues to be a crusader for the customer of Screen Formatting and works closely with individual customers to respond to their needs."

Edward Faurve, manager of programming, described my presentation on a file access system as follows. "It was a very, very thorough and professional job, and as such not only was an education to our customers present at the meeting, but also in style and organization that enhances the image of Control Data Corporation." [1970]

 

Leads installation team

Edward Faurve wrote the following. "I want to express to you members of the MARS-III project my deep appreciation for your excellence in performance in getting the M3E QSS product completed and accepted by Hughes Aircraft one month ahead of schedule. Your true professionalism and dedication toward exceeding the project goals demonstrates that the Arden Hills Programming organization does, indeed, have talented people. Your testing methods were closely coordinated with the customer and the actual verification of the product was performed in a logical and thorough manner. Because of these methods and procedures you were able to deliver a high-quality product within a minimum time frame." [1971]

Skills

Determines features

 

Determined features from customer surveys.

Read IBM Systems Journal, IEEE Computer, ComputerWorld, ACM publications, IBM manuals and DEC manuals to understand features of competitive systems.

Invented features that resulted in a technical excellence award.

 

Specifies design

 

Manager Ruth Dessel stated "A real strength! Gary ensures all requirements are well thought out in advance to avoid rework and defects later."

As a member of the design team wrote specifications for our product development programmers and customers.

Oversaw translation of specifications into customer manuals. The customer manual for screen formatting was 620 pages. Manual showed examples how features worked together to accomplish the customer's job.

Designed transaction processing for Network Operating System (NOS). Work resulted in promotion to consultant. Member of NOS design team that directed work of programmers. [1976-1979]

 

Creates project plans

Wrote project plans specifying deliverables, resources, schedules and dependencies. Projects include:

  • Mail*Hub Gobal Directory Server user interfaces [1995-1996]
  • EZview, Graphic User Interface [1993]
  • X Windows port to NOS/VE [1991-1992]
  • IM/SMART [1989]
  • Compiler/decompiler for screen formatting[1988]
  • Data validation and COBOL interface for screen formatting[1987]
  • Transaction recovery [1978-1980]

Directs people

  • Mail*Hub Global Directory Server (3-5 people) [1995-1996]
  • NOS/VE X Window System ( 2-4 people) [1991-1993]
  • NOS/VE screen formatting (1-4 people). Manager Doug Pansh stated "He worked closely with SVL (Sunnyvale, California) compiler products to ensure the features he was providing meet their requirements and were of high quality." [1986-1991]
  • NOS Transaction Facility (1-3 people). Trained new college graduates.
  • MASTER Multi Access Retrieval System (6-10 people)

 

Knows language suited for application

  • C, C++
  • COBOL
  • COMPASS (assembly language)
  • CYBIL (like PASCAL)
  • FORTRAN
  • HTML
  • JAVA
  • JAVA script
  • LISP, CLOS
  • HyperTalk
  • PASCAL
  • PERL
  • Tcl/Tk
  • UNIX sh, ksh

 

Writes code

  • Manager Doug Pansh wrote "Very effective code writer. Few bugs in released code."
  • Coded user interfaces for Mail*Hub installation using Tcl/Tk/PERL.
  • Moved UNIX X clients to NOS/VE OS. Changed NOS/VE job, task, interactive communications to work with xterm. Used CYBIL, C, UNIX commands.
  • Coded user interfaces using C, XLIB, XT, MOTIF.
  • Coded Graphic User Interface designer using Common Lisp Object System.
  • Coded terminal drivers, permanent file recovery using CYBIL.
  • Coded NOS Transaction system using assembly language.
  • Coded Macintosh applications using Pascal, C, C++, LISP, CLOS.
Motivation

Takes courses

Enhances knowledge through classes.

  • Excellence in Customer Service
  • Building Work Relationships
  • Programming Project Management
  • Investment in Excellence
  • Team Training
  • Effective Technical Writing
  • Human Factors in Computers
  • Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
  • Introduction to Information Analysis
  • JAVA Programming
  • C, C++, Advanced C++
  • X-Window System Programming
  • Structured Programming
  • UNIX Shell Programming
  • UNIX Internals
  • LISP

 

Reads books

Spends 3-6 hours per week studying and working exercises in books. Examples:

  • RAPID Development Taming Wild Software Schedules
  • Effective Methods for Software Testing
  • CGI Programming with PERL
  • HTML for Fun and Profit
  • Teach Yourself JAVA
  • Object-Oriented Programming in Common Lisp
  • The C++ Programming Language
  • Effective C++
  • Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment
  • UNIX Network Programming
  • Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence; wrote general problem solver and PROLOG interpreter in LISP
  • Tcl/Tk

 

Invests in productivity tools

Buys personal hardware and software to learn new technologies and increase productivity.

  • 33.6 FaxModem connects home with employer's computer systems.
  • Macintosh computers with over 1.5 gigabytes of storage
  • Macintosh UNIX operating system including TCP, NFS, FTP, MacX at home provides a compatible interface to employer's computer systems.
  • Languages (C++, JAVA, LISP, Pascal, PERL, Tcl/Tk/Itcl)
  • Databases (FileMaker Pro, FoxPro, Excel)
  • HTML editors - Designed this resume.
Employers

Employed at Control Data Corporation for over 30 years developing operating systems for large scientific and business computer systems. Experienced in the roles of designing products, managing projects and coding. Moved from role to role to supply critical knowledge and to meet product delivery schedules. Performed multiple roles simultaneously.

Education

University of Wisconsin at Madison BS degree, mathematics and computer science

See my work

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