About
My Software Development Background
I grew up in Dallas, Texas. I am a software developer and database architect. Here is a little history on my software development background.
I've always enjoyed working on UNIX-based operating systems, studying their internals, and writing C and C++ code. In late 1997, I began using the UNIX-based operating system, FreeBSD. At the time, I was studying computer science and I found that the FreeBSD operating system was a great accompaniment to the computer science courses that I was taking. I sat in on the upper level UNIX courses at the university, before I had the necessary prerequisites, so that I could gain quick insight into UNIX systems programming. In 1998, I was introduced to various distributions of GNU/Linux and in 1999, I started using OpenBSD. I then purchased my first Ultra Sparc workstation, which ran Solaris. I developed a multi-threaded library which I ported between the different systems. In an effort to better understand the differences between the operating systems, I picked up a copy of the legendary book, "The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD Operating System". I studied this book back and forth. While finishing my undergraduate degree in computer science during 2001 and 2002, I enrolled in the M.S. computer science program and took the graduate level operating systems and database design courses.
Since my introduction to FreeBSD in late 1997, I have had a passionate interest in designing, developing, and managing software on UNIX-based systems. To this day, I always seem to go back to FreeBSD as my operating system of choice. While I have developed on and administered other UNIX based operating systems, I've found that FreeBSD is a blast to work with.
My current profession includes software development, performance optimization, and database architecture. I continue to study kernel internals and enjoy the collaboration in the open source software communities. I also enjoy reading ACM, Usenix, and IEEE.
For the past three months, I have provided contract software services in the areas of UNIX software application architecture, and relational database design and management.
In late 2009, early 2010, I designed and developed a mobile software application, on the Apple iPhone, for the commercial transportation industry. My business partner was in the commercial transportation industry, and we collaborated extensively on the design and features. The application is called iLogMiles. iLogMiles incorporates a large number of custom screens and is backed by a custom database. For the first few weeks after its release on the App store, iLogMiles rose to the number two position in the top free business apps category and it received around 2000 downloads per day across multiple countries. iLogMiles was also featured in the Dallas Morning News and several commercial transportation publications across the U.S. The native computer programming language used to developed applications on iPhone is Objective-C; a close neighbor of C and C++.
From 2003 to 2009, I developed and managed an automated mortgage pricing and decisioning platform on GNU/Linux servers for a regulated bank. The software platform priced and qualified mortgage loans based on program underwriting rules and pricing adjusters. A generic grammar was used to define the structure of a set of pricing and underwriting rules so that any type of logical English statement could be translated into computer interpreted expressions for the purpose of adjusting the buy/sell price, margin, and index, and qualifying or disqualifying the loan. Mortgage pricing was pulled from wall street conduits, parsed into a DFA (C++), and then inserted or updated in a PostgreSQL object-relational database. The capital markets and underwriting departments managed the pricing and underwriting rules rules. The system featured an automated lock interface between the bank's central software systems and the capital markets department. Loans that were qualified by the system were sold and delivered into the secondary market. I designed the database (PostgreSQL) and developed the application in C++ and TCL on GNU/Linux servers over the course of 6 years. The system was managed by the bank's internal staff and it was deployed at 50+ bank branches across the U.S. During this time period, I migrated the bank's technology infrastructure to Linux servers and centralized their IT operations. In 2009, I continued to maintain and update the automated mortgage pricing platform for contract software clients.
I have been involved in various types of UNIX software projects, both developing and managing them, since my initial introduction to FreeBSD. Some of the code that I've written, along with images and screenshots, are available on this Web site. This site has been a work in progress over the past few years so feel free to send me your comments or feedback. I strive to keep the information as accurate as possible and I'm always open to making it better.
The best way to contact me is via the contact form on this Web site.
All of the content and images on this site which were created and produced by Bryan R. Hinton are © 2000-2010 by Bryan R. Hinton and may not be redistributed in any format without consent. For everything else, see the following and please make note of all respective authors, companies, organizations and entities which produced the work in question.
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BSD Daemon image is copyright Marshall Kirk McKusick.
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