Who is Jerry ?

last updated december-19-2001

Who is Jerry ?

Well, me, actually :-)

You might also be interested to know that I live in the historic Dutch city of
of Leiden. About 25 miles south of Amsterdam. Definitively worth a visit if
you are in the neighborhood.

Or that I am married, but currently have neither children nor pets :-)

And that, yes, I do sometimes find time to pursue other interests such as
Chess (I play by email at the IECG), horseback riding and photography.

I am also fascinated by the european culture during the Interbellum (1918-1939)
in it's many forms, be it poetry, music, painting, architecture, etc. Mail me
if you found some interesting site!.

However, you are probably more interested in a short resume:

Joint the Dutch Department of Defense (Navy) in 1980, where I did some
very important and secret work (just kidding :-). Actually I started out
in sonar, later getting involved with avionics. But as many people, I
gradually drifted from electronics into the booming computer field. This was
the time that, to quote Linus Thorvalds (the creator of Linux): 'men were
men and wrote their own device drivers'. Well, actually, you usually
winded up writing the file system and assembler as well. But that's a different
story. It was here in the early eighties that I first encountered the then
brand new Ada language.

After all that technology it was time for something different, so in 1987
I went back to school. In this particular case, to study Dutch Law at the
University of Leiden. During that time I worked part-time at a solicitors
office and guess what: they just started introducing computers... I also
saw my first articles published in the US, mainly on OS extensions in
assembler for the popular Atari (RIP) computer.

Bowing to the inevitable, in 1990 I went back into the IT industry, starting
as a C/ASM programmer, I soon was fully emerged in the then new art of
Windows Programming and voice recognition systems. Later that year I
became Senior Software Engineer at a company now best known as Ordina.

At Ordina I mostly worked in the financial (banking & insurance)group,
gradually getting more and more involved in the less technical aspects of the
IT business, like Sales & Marketing. After becoming a business consultant I
specialized in creation and improvement of developing environments, spanning
project management, methods, techniques, tools and procedures. Interesting
TLA's (Three Letter Acronyms :-) as ISO, CMM, TPI, PSP and others
apply here.

In 1999 I felt it was time for a change again and was presented with the rare
opportunity to join the unique Ada Core Technologies as their Windows
Technical Lead and Product Manager. So, I relocated Paris, France to get
involved in the exiting world of Open Source Software, Ada and Compiler
Technology. Soon to add the VxWorks embedded realtime Operating
System to my activities.

As great (and expensive :-) the city of Paris is to live in, especially if you
happen to have a view on both the Sacre Coeur and the Tour
Montparnasse and as interesting as the work was, it also was highly
exhausting. So in April 2001 I went back to my homecity of Leiden and
joined Business Review, a company specializing in the new field of
Application Integration Engineering as their new Manager Engineering.

Jerry van Dijk
jdijk@acm.org

Who is Jerry ?

last updated december-19-2001

Jerry's Ada on Win32 Page

Who is Jerry ?

Professional Career