My name is  Thomas Gerber, I'm a professional software developer, living in germany, bamberg. Currently I'm working for a company in bamberg that is developing and supplying software for physician-practice business. Since .NET 2.0 I'm a big fan of it and currently I'm preparing for the MCPD exam.

In the early years in 1982, when I was 12 years old, I started to make my first experiences in the world of developing. Fascinated by a C64, I made my first programs with BASIC. It took not long, and I featured out, that there must be a better way to create programs, as my goal was to implement the game pacman on my own. Finally, I did it, but it was too slow, so I heard about a incredible fast programming language called assembler, But my first affords to use this language failed after I typed in the assembler examples in the C64’s basic editor. I didn’t know why, and I made anything right, but everything the computer was able to run, was to honor me with a “Syntax Error” message. After I figured out that you need an assembler program, I decided to write it on my own in basic. It was awfully slow, and assembled the code from a datasete (a tape recorder to store and load files with 9600 baud!), but it worked and my next step was to build a faster assembler, but now writing it with my basic assembler and compile it. And then I was close to my goal to build pacman. Unfortunately, after 1 year pacman was no longer hip and so I was seeking out for new challenges. In my school time I developed an extension for the C64’s basic that was even capable to write games with graphics and sound, a texteditor, a graphic tool that was mspaint like and many more stuff.

In 1984 the time has come to increase my experience with a brand new amiga. I knew the C64’s kernel on my own, but seeing the Amiga’s kernel, it was a different world like a dwarf meeting a giant. I made many sophisticated programs for the amiga, one of the most favorites where “Platine” a development kit to construct and render single- and double sided circuit boards for home users and Visor a very capable texeditor for multiple program languages that was able to use syntax highlighting, folding, fast search and replace algorithms and many things that disappeared in the computer world for years until visual studio 2005.

In my profession, my efforts are always to construct programs, that use the latest and fastest algorithms and an intuitive user interface so it makes fun to use it. To archive this, I often needed to develop new algorithms, like the delta node algorithm, that makes it possible to edit very large text files of billions of lines without waiting delays. You know, actually there are two possibilities how a editor can manage texts: the simple way is to keep it in memory as is, but this needs always to move a large amount of memory when you have to insert or delete one or more lines close to the beginning. The seconds, but memory consuming way is to use a linked list for every line, that also causes to fragment the memory. Now imagine an algorithm that uses both advantages without their misfits and that is even faster with removing or inserting lines as the list method could be. That’s the delta node algorithm that was introduced 2002 with an editor for xdt files (which have nothing to do with fox mulder’s business  ).

Now, 3 years later, I improved that algorithm to enable semi-virtual treeviews and I’m calling it the nested delta node algorithm. It’s implemented in the JediGrid control, that was developed in C# with visual studio 2005, and I’m tending to give it free for private purpose, together with my extended Sidebar, that mixes both, the Windows XP Explorerbar with the Outlook 2003 bar, and extended features. You’ll have a close look at it with my upcoming preview.

And not to mention the DockPanel Control, that can be used to dock different panels together, an all sides and even as tabs, not like seen in Delphi and Visual Studio, but in a never seen floating visual way.

These components will be introduced in my new docExplorer, a company internal tool to view, edit and analyse xdt files. But, the new docExplorer will do much more. I’m going to join the messiah engine (a engine that allows access to different data sources, not only from a database,  of course using hyperthreading), and the currently unnamed user interface, that I previously named DOCvista, because it was released as part of a program, supplied from the company, that I work for a view days after the new name of XP’s successor was announced, and vista seemed to be the perfect name for what it does. But meanwhile, the company has decided to name this application PIA.

see also www.docexplorer.blog.de or www.pia2006.blog.de