Kent Beck

Current

Senior Consultant at Cutter Consortium
Director at JUnit.org
Programmer at Three Rivers Consulting, Inc.

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Past

Fellow at Agitar Software
Programmer at MasPar
Programmer at Apple Computer

Programmer at Tektronix

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1 more...

Education

University of Oregon

Recommended

4 people have recommended Kent

Connections

375 connections

Industry

Computer Software

Websites

Kent Beck’s Summary

My goal is to program well on teams and to encourage improvement in my profession. I am actively working on becoming more transparent and accountable in my work and improving my skills designing incrementally and interacting with people.

I have been programming for 35 years, 24 professionally. I am fluent in Java, Smalltalk, and Eclipse. I am interested in learning Rails, Erlang, and REST.

My current academic project is a study of software design. I will be giving public and private lectures/workshops as I progress. Please contact me if your company is interested in sponsoring this research.

I travel with my family when I travel on business, which limits the time and complicates the schedule for traveling. I am experienced with working remotely--coaching, presenting, pair programming, and programming independently.

Kent Beck’s Specialties:

Software process, agile development, incremental design, test-driven development, the insurance industry.

Kent Beck’s Experience

Senior Consultant

Cutter Consortium

(Computer Software industry)

2000 — Present (9 years )
Director

JUnit.org

(Information Technology and Services industry)

October 1997 — Present (12 years 3 months)

I develop JUnit, initially with Erich Gamma and now with David Saff. Open-source project producing a tool to encourage programmers to write automated tests.
• JUnit embedded in all Java development environments.
• Winner of JavaWorld Editor’s Choice (3 times), JDJ Editor’s Choice Award, Java Pro Magazine's Reader's Choice Award.
• JUnit architecture translated into more than thirty programming languages.
Programmer

Three Rivers Consulting, Inc.

(Computer Software industry)

September 1992 — Present (17 years 4 months)

Proprietor of independent consulting company: marketing, sales, bookkeeping, and delivery. Developed, marketed, and sold development tools. Developed, delivered, and licensed training materials.
• Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change and Test-Driven Development: By Example won Jolt Productivity Award.
• Original signer of the Agile Manifesto.
• Keynote speaker at many major conferences including OOPSLA, RailsConf, QCon, JAOO, EclipseWorld, SD Best Practices. Presented on all continents (less Antarctica).
Fellow

Agitar Software

(Computer Software industry)

2004 — 2008 (4 years )

Supported sales and marketing and reviewed product direction.
• Helped close $100K deal with Japanese utility by developing relationship with board chairman.
• Presented series of workshops in Europe establishing Agitar’s presence in the market and contributing to €700K in first year sales.
• Presented JUnit 4 to SRO crowd at JavaOne with Agitar founder Alberto Savoia.
Programmer

MasPar

(Computer Software industry)

1989 — 1992 (3 years )

Developed the client user interface for debugging programs on a 16K processor SIMD supercomputer.
• Developed interactive data visualization.
• With compiler groups and debugger server group, pioneered incremental statement-level profiling of optimized Fortran and C code.
Programmer

Apple Computer

(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; AAPL; Computer Hardware industry)

January 1987 — June 1989 (2 years 6 months)

Responsible for productizing Smalltalk and researching next-generation programming languages.
• Lead developer for Macintosh Smalltalk (cancelled before release).
• On team of eight led by Alan Kay developing and evaluating Playground, a programming language for middle-school students.
• Wrote cult classic Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns, an influence on Java’s collection classes.
• Program chair for OOPSLA-89.
Programmer

Tektronix

(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; TEK; Telecommunications industry)

July 1984 — January 1987 (2 years 7 months)

Researched dynamic languages.
• Applied patterns to software development with Ward Cunningham.
• Received US patent 4,885,717 for “A System for Graphically Representing Operation of Object-oriented Programs.”
• Helped popularize CRC cards.
• Developed the HotDraw drawing editor framework, and early influence of Java’s AWT and Swing.