Dr. Gerald Schröder: A Life of Learning, (Re-)Searching, Teaching and Consulting

Dr. Gerald Schröder, 2022 space


Short version

1967born here in Harburg, Hamburg, Germany
1973 - 1986School in Hittfeld, Niedersachsen, Germany
1986Abitur at the Gymnasium Hittfeld
1986 - 1993University of Hamburg, Computer Science and Social Sciences
1993Master of Computer Science
1993 - 1999Research Assistant at the Unversity of Hamburg and the Technical University of Hamburg, Software Systems Institute
1999Ph.D. in Computer Science
1999 - 2001Specialist for Software Engineering Methods and Tools at DAK (health insurance company)
2001Software Technology Consultant at itelligence (software consulting)
2002-2011Senior Java Developer at InfoDesign-OSD (software consulting)
since 2012Software Developer (freelancer)


Long Version

My interest in computers started in school, beginning with Basic, Turbo-Pascal and Z80-Assembler on TRS-80 and several CP/M- computers. Digging deep into the machine and programming at the hardware and operating system level was my pleasure.

Studying at the University of Hamburg from 1986 till 1993 with the major computer science and the minor sociology, my special interests were operating systems, compilers, data bases, software ergonomics and new urban sociology (quite a strange mix, I know). My studies included the debugging and extension of the more or less famous Modula-2/DBPL-VAX-compiler. In my master's thesis the exploration of syntactic language extensions attracted me so that I introduced a syntax extension facility in the Tycoon system (now called Tycoon-1 since the even more famous Tycoon-2 system succeeded). While studying I worked part-time as operator at the computing centre of the department of computer science (where else do you get the opportunity to play around with such expensive toys?); and I embarrassed generations of students as tutor at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg and the University of Hamburg - they will never believe anyone again, I suspect; sorry for that.

Preparing a PhD thesis and working for a living and started October 1993 as research assistant at Hamburg University, department of Databases and Information Systems (DBIS). From January 1997 I was (once again) employed by the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg, Software Systems Institute (STS). My main responsibility lied in the management of analysis and programming teams, in the Tycoon project in the area of persistent programming language environments (R.I.P.), and in several projects in the Internet Information Systems and SAP area. In the context of my PhD thesis and of several projects I was involved in the supervision of about 20 student projects and master's theses ("my" students are now earning much more money than I am, such a pity). Beside this raising of young geniuses I prepared and gave several courses, mostly at the graduate level, in the area of software development (object-oriented languages, i.e, Java), database design (object-relational databases, i.e., Oracle), and analysis (object-oriented modelling, i.e., UML).

I defended successfully my PhD thesis about management and development of cooperating persistent object systems in April 1999.

From October 1999 till March 2001 I worked for the DAK, a health-insurance company (10,000+ employees) in Hamburg, Germany, as a specialist for software engineering methods and tools. We were developing a new generation of the internal software using object-oriented client-server techniques, i.e., J2EE architecture, component modeling using UML. But when management heard that SAP would maybe, under certain circumstances, in several years ... develop an industry solution for health insurance, they quit the project. I love managers for these decisions, as you may guess.

So I moved on to itelligence, an IT consultancy company with about 1,500 consultants (at that time). From April 2001 till December 2001 I joined a team of 10 Java experts. We explored, exploited, and coached modern software technologies, i.e., Java J2EE, JMS, XML, JUnit. Until itelligence concluded that SAP is a much more interesting area to gain money than Java. Now you know why I love SAP, also.

We felt that we had to move on to a new surrounding, because we were caught by Open Source. At InfoDesign we worked together as a team of Java developers sharing the same understanding of software development. Our contribution to the Open Source community was iValidator, a framework for automated integration testing (RIP).

One by one my fellows became freelancers. I followed them in 2012.

My focus lies on the development of Java applications, especially at the server side. I strongly recommend using Open Source frameworks, event-driven architecture, test-driven development, and automated integration testing, however, mostly without success.


Projects

I participated in these projects:


Publications


Talks


Teaching