James D. Simmons
James Simmons has programmed professionally since 1978. Back then computer programs were made using a special machine that punched holes into cards, reels of tape were the most common data storage medium, and hard disks were so expensive and exotic that the hard disk inventory of a Fortune 500 company would today be considered barely large enough to hold a nice picture of Jessica Alba.
The industry has come a long way since then, and to a lesser extent so has James.
James learned to program at Oakton Community College in Morton Grove, Illinois and Western Illinois University in Macomb, Illinois. Times were hard back then and a young man's best chance of being employed after graduation was to become an Accountant or a Computer Programmer. It was while he attended OCC that James saw a Monty Python sketch about an Accountant who wished to become a Lion Tamer. This convinced James that he should become a Computer Programmer.
James' studies at WIU got off to a rough start when he signed up for Basic Assembly Language as his first real computer class, erroneously thinking that the word "Basic" meant "for beginners". From the computer's point of view it was basic, but for students not so much. He barely passed the course with a "D" but in the process learned that he enjoyed programming computers. He decided to continue his computer studies and graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Information Science.
James was born in 1956, the year before Sputnik went up. He was a nerdy kid. At various times he fooled around with Erector sets, chemistry sets, microscopes, dissecting kits, model cars, model planes, model rockets, amateur radio, film making, and writing science fiction stories. He achieved no real success with any of these activities.
James participated in the first Give One Get One promotion of the One Laptop Per Child project and started developing Activities for the Sugar platform soon after. He has written the Activities Read Etexts, View Slides, Sugar Commander and Get Internet Archive Books.
“The main reason to use Booki rather than a word processor to write a book is to effectively collaborate with other authors. The book you are reading is my second attempt to do this (and the Spanish translation of my first FLOSS Manual would definitely qualify as a third) so my opinions on this might be worth something.The first thing is that there are good reasons to collaborate and not so good. A good one is that your collaborator can bring expertise to the book that you don't have. A bad one is that you think there will be less work for you if you have a collaborator. There are many human activities where "Many hands make light labor". Writing a book isn't one of them.”
“When you have done some programming then you'll know how satisfying it can be to use a program that you made yourself, one that does exactly what you want it to do. Creating a Sugar Activity takes that enjoyment to the next level. A useful Sugar Activity can be translated by volunteers into every language, be downloaded hundreds of times a week and used every day by students all over the world.”