PAUL TUCKER WITHINGTON

Career Interests

Computer-aided problem solving. Hardware/Software interaction.

Overview

I am a Principal-level Computer Scientist with over 49 years experience researching, designing and implementing evolutionary solutions to complex problems. I have organizational experience ranging from startup to commercial and from private to international to government-funded research. I have technical experience ranging from electro-mechanical, to computer hardware, networking, operating systems, computer languages, development environments, and end-user applications.

I have strong writing and communication skills founded on my liberal arts education and refined through 41 years of working with geographically distributed organizations. I am co-author of a book on object-oriented programming and author of a number of technical papers in various computer science fields.

Work Experience

Nest Labs is a privately held startup founded in 2010 — the creator of the world’s first Learning Thermostat. I joined Nest as employee 45.

At Nest I am a member of the Services Group. I work on developing, deploying, and maintaining the cloud-based services that support the Nest Learning Thermostat, remote clients, and analytic and reporting systems.

Laszlo Systems is a privately held startup founded in 2002 to develop a platform for deploying rich internet applications into any browser. I joined Laszlo as employee 19.

At Laszlo I was a member of the Open Source Platform Group, developing and enhancing our multi-runtime rich internet application platform. I extended the compiler to multiple back-ends and to compile a subset of the proposed Javascript 2 standard supporting classes. I enhanced the debugger to support backtraces, inspection, monitoring, tracing and memory leak analysis. I created a Javascript profiler. I extended the language to support mixins, CSS styling and a general mechanism for binding internal data structures to external representations. I worked with other members of the team to support HTML5 and SWF10 runtimes. I worked extensively with the open source community to coordinate contributions to the platform.

Curl Corporation is a privately held startup founded in 1998 to develop next generation web infrastructure software. I joined Curl as employee 33.

At Curl I participated in the evolution of the Curl language and syntax. I designed and prototyped a date and time library. I developed a program to automatically convert the code base from its original prefix syntax to the current infix syntax. I designed a macro system for Curl. I implemented a serialization substrate and designed and implemented a portable object format. I designed and implemented a "release tool" for delivering Curl applications. I maintained and enhanced the garbage collector. I wrote a memory allocation tracing and analysis tool. I ported core Curl to run under Mac OS X. I fixed bugs and made enhancements to the low-level debugger. PRESENTATIONS— Automatic Memory Management, lecture given to MIT 6.894 Object-Oriented Dynamic Languages. A software journeyman on a panel of wizards, notes from Dynamic Languages Wizards Panel.

Harlequin was a privately held software company founded in the United Kingdom in 1986 with products in digital printing and publishing and advanced software development.

At Harlequin I was the senior member of the Adaptive Memory Management Group. We chartered ourselves to centralize the memory management expertise in the company, to create a framework and substrate that could supply the memory management needs for all the company's products, and to investigate commercializing this substrate as a product. The framework supported Harlequin's ScriptWorks Postscript interpreter and Harlequin Dylan development environment. I participated in Dylan language design, contributed to the method precedence and threads extension designs, and proposed extensions in support of memory management, weak references, and finalization. BOOKS— Dylan Programming, an introductory book on programming in that dynamic object-oriented language. PAPERS— A Monotonic Superclass Linearization for Dylan and A Proposal for a Standard Memory Management Interface.

Symbolics was founded in 1980 to commercialize the symbol processing computers known as Lisp Machines developed at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. The company was taken public in 1985 and entered bankruptcy in January 1993.

At Symbolics I designed and implemented a network boot protocol for Lisp workstations. I designed and implemented a stand-alone Lisp system to control and debug the Genera Lisp environment on the Ivory single-chip symbolic processor. I was a lead contributor to the teams that embedded that processor in Macintosh and Unix workstations. I implemented support for a proprietary HDTV video-processing board. I was lead designer and implementor of a real-time Lisp system for an embedded system using the Ivory processor, solely responsible for the virtual memory and automatic storage-management systems. I was lead contributor to a long-term planning effort to chart future product direction. I was lead designer and implementor of a software virtual machine emulator for the Ivory processor to run the Genera Lisp environment on the DEC Alpha processor under OSF/1, again solely responsible for the virtual memory and storage systems. I participated in the ANSI Lisp standardization. PAPERS— How Real is ‘Real-Time’ GC, The Lisp Machine: Noble Experiment or Fabulous Failure? and The Symbolics Virtual Lisp Machine.

Encore Computer was founded in 1983 to create scalable computing facilities ranging from workstations to multi-computers. The company was taken public in 1985.

At Encore I was hired as a member of a team charged with designing a distributed, multi-processor operating system for their new hardware. This project was canceled and I was shifted to porting Unix to their workstation product. This project was also canceled. At the time I left Encore, I was in charge of development and adaptation of utilities for their Unix-based multi-processor.

Automatix was founded in 1980 to develop and sell industrial robotic and artificial vision systems. I joined as employee 48. The company was taken public in 1983.

At Automatix I designed and implemented a real-time, multi-tasking operating system to support artificial vision and robot-controller products. I specified and was responsible for the Unix-based software development environment. I contributed to the design of a new hardware system and led a group to re-implement my operating system to support both Unix and the existing product line on the resulting 68000-based multi-processor.

Callitrope is a consulting service, founded in 1980, applying computers to the fine arts and art to the science of computing.

Between full-time employment I have consulted on projects ranging from hardware design to Unix systems internals to optimizing workflow in the layout department of a monthly newspaper to automated scheduling of indoor soccer leagues. I specified, implemented, and maintain the virtual hosting environment that provides domain, web and email services to a number of small businesses, whose web sites are designed by my partner. I built a PHP framework for databased-backed forms with validation. I have expertise in MacOS and Mac OS X, Unix, Linux, OpenBSD, Apache, QMail, DNS, Bind, IP Firewall, and DHCP. I have programmed in C, Lisp, Dylan, Python, JavaScript, Java, C++, AppleScript, Perl, PHP and MySQL. I have developed web content in HTML, XHTML, XML, and XSLT using BBEdit, GoLive, PhotoShop, Illustrator, ImageReady, and Acrobat.

MITRE is a Federally Funded Research Center founded in 1958 that performs systems engineering and integration work for Department of Defense.

At MITRE I worked in the areas of computer security, message systems, software design and verification, capability-based operating systems, and secure distributed processing. PAPERS— The Design of a Multics Security Kernel, A Secure Flat File System for Multics, Evaluation of Secure UNIX Prototypes, Data-flow Analysis as an Aid to Verification, The Trusted Function in Secure Decentralized Processing, Information Security and Network Protocols, and A Perspective on Computer Security.

Education

CONCENTRATION— Applied Mathematics and Computer Science. THESIS— Micro-programming High-level Languages. AWARDS— Dean's List 1972–1975, Harvard College (honorary) Scholarship, National Science Foundation honorable mention.

Personal Background

Attended Governor Dummer Academy in Byfield, Massachusetts; graduated cum laude 1971; received Bausch and Lomb and Rensselær Polytechnic medals for mathematics and science; National Merit Scholarship finalist. HOBBIES— cycling, triathlon, skiing, tennis, cooking and gardening.