John Catherino's People Page

I have been a software developer for my entire professional career. Starting out 20 years ago as a newly degreed Computer Scientist from Oakland University: I graduated a classically trained Multician! Steeped in PL/I, Lisp, Prolog, and Modula: Ironically, I started out developing realtime engine control systems in assembly language! I then went on to use C, and later became totally caught up in the whole C++ craze when the language burst onto the scene. However, quickly I became utterly disenchanted; watching the resulting code slowly degenerate into an enormous, unmanageable mess. (I truly believe it was an incredible attempt though!)

As a result, I have been developing almost exclusively in Java, for more than ten years now. Once I sampled its streamlined object syntax, and the JDK 1.0 runtime library: I was never going back! Some of my favorite things to develop are applets: Believe it or not!

Anybody who thinks applets cannot do anything an application can, should definitely visit the cajo project! (I have also become quite enamoured with WebStart, and now it is fully supported as well.)

I have been steadily working in my spare time, for the past few years, on a highly refined, and powerful distributed architecture. It uses Java RMI to allow multiple computers to literally coalesce transparently. I wanted to create a method for both computers, and developers, to link together dynamically; and to share their best object gems.

I feel this project is my Magnum Opus; i.e. the finest work of my career. (Only so far, I hope :) After a lot of soul searching; I decided to make it free. It is a little scary to make one's most precious and personal code available for world scrutiny...

I welcome you to come have a look. I think it creates some really great new possibilities for Java.

Well, I've never used a signature here before, but just this once, since we're all friends:

-- "My other car is a cdr" --

(If you got that one, you definitely are an übergeek ;-)

If this signature makes absolutely no sense, and you are curious; some insight can be found here.