On Tuesday, June 9, I’ll be in San Francisco to participate as a panel member in one of Paragon Development’s Voice-of-Market forums, concerning the development and marketing of a new programming language.  Further details are confidential, but I hope one day to be able to say “I was there when…”

Many of you know that one of my clients, Synergex, is a vendor of their own programming language (Synergy/DE).  This new language is not intended to compete in the same market space, and my engagement is only for the one day.  I wouldn’t have accepted it if I had perceived any possibility of a conflict of interest.

I’m looking forward to the event – programming language design is my favorite specialty.  Besides advising Synergex on the design of their language features, I participated on the X3J12 ANSI subcommittee for Standard DIBOL, and I’ve written a number of compilers and interpreters – some of which were for languages of my own design.  This should be most interesting – especially the opportunity to discuss it with seven other industry experts.

I’ll only be in San Francisco for the day, but I should have a couple of hours free at SFO between about 4:30 to 6:30 PM before flying home.  If anyone would like to meet up there, leave a comment here or contact me.

Eighteen years ago today I first became an independent consultant.  I was still employed at CPAS in Pensacola, Florida for two more months.  Afterwards, I moved to Gulf Breeze, Florida where I set up shop for a few more years.

While visiting Synergex in October of 1993, I helped them lay plans for porting their products to the Windows platform.  I could see that if I were to be helpful in this massive project, I would need to be there constantly.  So I moved in January, 1994 to Sacramento and thence to Rancho Cordova, California.  I met my wife at Synergex, and moved into her house in Folsom.  The two of us decided in 2000 to move to Bainbridge Island, Washington — which is where I live and work today.

Here are eighteen maxims from my eighteen years of experience.

Gee but it’s great to be back home.

I returned late on Friday night from a productive trip to Synergex. Back in the early ’90s, I used to travel so often that I kept a bag packed and ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Nowadays, I travel so infrequently that just preparing for and winding down from a trip takes a day or two in itself.

I’ll be catching up on things that happened while I was away, and “just trying to keep my customers satisfied”.