Matthew Jason Benson

Professional Objective

My ideal position is one in which my talents are used to develop, or develop build systems for, useful and/or interesting software.

General Skills

Strong written communications, Ability to learn quickly and independently, Always willing to help peers.

Computer Skills

Programming Languages: Java, COBOL, SQL, Unix shell scripts, Windows/DOS command scripts aka batch files, Javascript, PL-SQL, Visual Basic under duress.

Java/J2EE: Apache Ant, Apache Commons, ANTLR 2.x, Morph, Spring framework, Spring Web Flow, Hibernate ORM, JSP, JSTL, JSP custom tags, Freemarker, Dozer, JUnit, DWR AJAX library, iText PDF library, Struts 1, Threading, Servlets, JDBC, Portlets, RMI, JMS, Swing.

DBMS: Oracle, DB2, Pervasive/Btrieve v6.0-8.5.

Data Formats: HP-PCL, XML, HTML, UML.

Operating Environments: Windows NT/2000/XP/2003, OS X, Solaris, Linux, Cygwin, MS-DOS, Novell Netware 3.x-4.x.

Software: Apache Ant, CVS (user/admin), Subversion (user/some admin), PVCS, PGP/GnuPG, ghostScript, ghostPcl, Image Alchemy, Bugzilla (user/admin), JIRA (user/admin), ViewVC (formerly ViewCVS - user/admin), LifePro, MicroSoft Office, Crystal Reports 6.x.

Miscellaneous: RTFM, STFW.

Interests

Software Build Systems
Language Parsing / Domain-specific Languages
Integration of Enterprise and Legacy Systems
Imaging
Document Generation

Employment History

Senior Program Analyst - Internet
Permanent General Assurance Corporation
October 2005-Present

Projects:

Developed a lightweight Java bean configuration package similar to an IOC container, but syntactically a compromise between Java and XML, motivated by the verbosity of the Spring framework's inversion of control (IOC) container. The ANTLR parser generator tool was used to develop the parser for the domain-specific language, whose syntax was focused on brevity. Some features included transparent collection conversion from generic or typed array syntax, best-match method invocation, prototype and parent beans a la Spring IOC, and a system of mapping objects via hierarchical keys to find, given e.g. an ordered set of properties, the best match in a set of configured objects.
Developed an abstract Java library for working with flat file data structures in a pseudo-OO fashion, including a DSL to define flat file structures in a terse descendant of COBOL copybook syntax (Permanent General has made this library available via software grant to the Apache Commons sandbox, as the flatfile component.
Development and maintenance of online insurance quote tools using Struts 1, Spring IOC/MVC/Web Flow, Hibernate, AJAX via DWR, Freemarker and JSP.
CVSNT administration; implemented CVSNT email notification akin to that available for Unix CVS.
JIRA administration.

Senior Application Developer
CNA Life/Valley Forge Life
October 1998-September 2005

Projects:

Developed a Spring Web MVC viewer for an Oracle database. Hibernate Object-Relational mapping was leveraged to resolve the database structure in terms of programming objects, and was supplemented by considerable amounts of custom SQL due to the complexity of the legacy data structure. Careful study of the Spring framework allowed greater flexibility with a smaller codebase than the company's prior Spring/Hibernate project.
Primary designer/developer of a fast, flexible COBOL utility for extracting hundreds of thousands of policies' data from a (LifePro) Btrieve database in scant few hours. A particularly interesting component of this project: the COBOL-written expression parser that evaluated boolean expressions (including relational operators and grouping), compiling these from text to procedure pointer calls at runtime.
Implemented an Ant-based build system for Net Express COBOL applications, including awareness of copybooks.
Used MS Word macros to implement a seamless user experience uploading Word documents via servlets to JMS queues. Created a servlet-based JMS queue browser/editor as a development aid.
Developed a Java-based reporting library to write arbitrary SQL resultset data to HTML and PDF formats, backed by the iText library.
Varied reporting (ad-hoc and otherwise) against Oracle and Btrieve databases.
Ongoing enhancements and modifications to a legacy PCL policy generation system.

Open Source Projects

Apache Ant Project Management Committee
Apache Software Foundation
August 2004-Present
From How the ASF works: A PMC member is a developer or a committer that was elected due to merit for the evolution of the project and demonstration of commitment. They have write access to the code repository, an apache.org mail address, the right to vote for the community-related decisions and the right to propose an active user for committership. The PMC as a whole is the entity that controls the project, nobody else.
Apache Ant Committer
Apache Software Foundation
February 2004-August 2004
From How the ASF works: A committer is a developer that was given write access to the code repository and has a signed Contributor License Agreement (CLA) on file. They have an apache.org mail address. Not needing to depend on other people for the patches, they are actually making short-term decisions for the project.
Apache Jakarta Committer
Apache Software Foundation
January 2007-Present
The Jakarta project houses a number of Java subprojects.
Apache Commons Project Management Committee
Apache Software Foundation
June 2007-Present
Set of independent and reusable Java libraries, formerly Apache Jakarta Commons.
Foundation Member
Apache Software Foundation
December 2007-Present
From How the ASF works: An ASF member is a person who was nominated by current members and elected due to merit for the evolution and progress of the foundation.
Travel Assistance Committee Member
Apache Software Foundation
September 2008-Present
From ASF Travel Assistance: The Travel Assistance Committee exists to help those that would like to attend ApacheCon events, but are unable to do so for financial reasons.
Developer/Release Manager
Morph object mapping framework
January 2007-Present
Bug fixes and functionality enhancements.
Project Administrator
Jext Java Text Editor
2000-2003
Bug fixes and enhancements to the Swing user interface, core architecture and shipped plugins.
Contributor
iText Java-PDF library
iText is perhaps the most widely-used Java library for creating documents in Adobe's Portable Document Format.

Certifications

Sun Certified Developer for the Java 2 Platform, April 2001
Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform, October 2000

Education

Associate of Applied Science in Business Technology, December 1998. Graduated with honors
Nashville State Technical Institute
Overall GPA: 3.575
High School, June 1992. Graduated with honors
Hume-Fogg Academic High School
Overall GPA: 3.2

Miscellany

I have an agile mind and an insatiable desire to know how and why systems work. I tend to be the first person to encounter limitations with a technology, but as a result have had to become skilled at finding solutions to such problems. I never shrink from an intellectual challenge, and take particular pleasure in making a system surpass its own limitations.

I am an avid user of open-source software. I always assume that I am not the first person to need a tool to accomplish a particular task, and that a reliable open-source solution probably exists. I monitor the user lists of the projects I am most interested in, which yields the benefit of my having read many questions--and answers.

Through my continuing interest in open source, I was elected first as a committer and later to the Project Management Committee of the Apache Software Foundation's Ant project. Membership in an Apache project is attained only as a result of positive impressions made on other project members; the ASF calls this principle Meritocracy. In 2007 I was elected as a committer to Apache Jakarta, and when Apache Commons left the Jakarta umbrella to become a top-level project of the foundation, I became a member of its founding PMC. In late 2007, my sustained contribution to the ASF was recognized by granting me foundation membership.

My references are available on request.

Last modified October 2008.