Kins Collins - Resume

resume of

Kins Collins, M.S. - Macintosh Software Engineer
kins_collins @ mac.com [remove spaces] (650)298-8560

Located in south SF Bay Area (Silicon Valley).
I can work at customer's site or at home if the firm is local,
but relocation out of Silicon Valley is not possible.

Redwood City --- Silicon Valley, CA

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Twenty-five years programming experience -- incl. 15 years Mac.
Noted for clean design -- code that's easy to understand,
maintain, modify. Now developing exclusively with Cocoa and
Xcode for iPhone and iPad.

I seek a position creating applications for iOS SDK. The
tools I use are the Xcode development system, Interface Builder,
and Cocoa (Foundation & UIKit libraries) and Apple's performance
and debugging utilities (gdb, Instruments, Shark, unit testing).
I use Subversion for source-control.

My earlier work was done in C++ for Mac OS (10 years) and included
TCP/IP, http, client-server apps, and the Internet, also user-
interface design and USB device-drivers. With that behind me, today
ALL my work is done using the Objective-C language, Cocoa
touch, and iOS.

Beyond the usual UI coding for iPhone (tabbars, navbars, tableviews,
animation, image manipulation), I can also write low-level
peer-to-peer socket code (BonJour, CFNetwork, CFSocketStream, tcp,
udp, etc.) and can demo such iPhone work to you. Also have written
iPhone code for consumption of RESTful data streams (OAuth, http,
XML parsing). Also can handle SQLite and OpenGL when necessary. I
have some acquaintance with Core Data for iPhone. I have some slight
experience with Agile and Test-driven Development.

I always aim at pure object-oriented programming based on the
Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern, and I strive to adhere
closely to Apple's programming guidelines. I am thoroughly versed
in the iPhone documentation. Two of my apps are currently in Apple's
AppStore: HP Photobook and LinkedIn client.

Currently available for contract work.
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NOTE TO RECRUITERS: I am NOT a Microsoft Windows programmer, nor do I know the Android system.
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EMPLOYMENT HISTORY

iOS & Cocoa touch

May - Jul. 2010 Consulting Software Engineer, BoardVantage, Inc. (3 months)
o Contract. iPad project (SDK 3.2). Developed using Xcode, Interface Builder,
& Cocoa touch.
I was to develop an application like DropBox for use in an office setting.
Thus my code enabled secure distribution of documents from a client's Restful
server using http connections, and XML parsing of team lists and document lists.
With my app the user could read documents and view photos, and also see
metadata about the docs. The app included secure login, setting permissions
for the user's docs on the server, and navigation of the server's file system.

It used tabbars, split-views, popover views, webviews, tableviews. It also
made use of Core Animation and sheets. My code served as the nucleus of the
app, which the permanent staff was to continue developing and complete.

iPhone OS & Cocoa touch

Nov. 2009 - Feb. 2010 Consulting Software Engineer, Transpera, Inc. (3 months)
o Contract. iPhone project (SDK). Developed using Xcode, Interface Builder,
& Cocoa touch.
I was engaged by Transpera, a developer of applications for delivering
video and ads to mobile devices, to join their programming team with
the task of updating several of their iPhone apps. The apps enabled
iPhone users to select and stream movies and TV shows to their devices.
I was to add features and fix bugs in the existing code, which I
successfully accomplished.

Feb. - May 2009 Consulting Software Engineer, Hewlett-Packard Labs. (3 months)
o Development Contract. iPhone project (SDK). Developed using Xcode,
Interface Builder, & Cocoa touch.
I was engaged by Hewlett-Packard to join two permanent employees to write
an application meant to test whether iPhone hardware and SDK were powerful
enough to successfully incorporate some Hewlett-Packard proprietary code
that does automatic page layout of photo sets aiming at producing a book
suitable for printing.

The user interface for the app had already been worked out down to the
last detail in a Flash video and written doc before I joined the research
team. My function was to take that UI-behavior and implement it in the
correct Cocoa way. Thus I designed the overall structure of the program,
following Apple's strict layered MVC design-paradigm for Cocoa apps. My
supervisor, who was new to Cocoa, and I collaborated in the implementa-
tion code. He and I implemented a kind of drag and drop for thumbnail
images that enabled the user to override automated layout to suit his
individual taste. Page layouts were archived to disk in real time, so
should the phone ring, none of the user's customizing effort would be
lost. The app thus took photo sets of the user's choice and produced
from them a PDF book that was ready to be uploaded to H-P servers or
to send on to printshops.

We used scrollViews, tableViews, navigation bars, buttons, Core Animation,
transitions, text parsing, single and double taps, swipes, etc. Proper
memory management was used throughout. My work was for iPhone, but the
app has been updated for iPad and is now available on the AppStore as
HP Photobook. [Unfortunately the update for iPad contains a huge
bug: You can't import the device's photo library. This capability WAS
present in my iPhone version.]

Sep. - Oct. 2008 Consulting Software Engineer, Orange Labs. (6 weeks)
o Development Contract. iPhone project (SDK). Developed using Xcode
& Cocoa touch.
The product I designed and partially coded was Gift2Phone, a social
networking app for sending virtual gifts to friends from your iPhone.
My task as lead programmer was to design the program, code as much of
it as I could in six weeks, and train and guide one other developer,
who took over the project when my 6-week contract was over.

Using Xcode, I either wrote the classes that my design required or
sketched them out with stubs. The parts I coded myself were the http-
code to access the Orange RESTful server using the "OAuth opensource
library", the XML parser for the incoming data, the model classes
generated for the data, and the datasource classes which interfaced
with the iPhone ViewController classes. I gave advice to the other
programmer regarding the view classes, how best to code them, how to
follow the Apple iPhone User Interface guidelines, etc.

When my prescribed time was up, I wrote out detailed instructions for
how the project was to be completed. My colleague has since then
completed the app, and it will soon be available from Apple's AppStore.

Aug. 2008 Consulting Software Engineer, Equals Inc. (1 week)
o Planning & Scheduling Contract. iPhone project (SDK). Developed using
Xcode & Cocoa touch.
During this very short contract, I worked out the details of Equals'
social-networking client application for the iPhone mobile device. I
designed the overall structure of the program following MVC rules.
The necessary programmer tasks, their sequencing, and the time
required for each were determined and documented. I also defined all
the classes for the project and did their initial coding in Objective-C
and Xcode. The work of implementing my design was done in India.

Jun. - Jul. 2008 Consulting Software Engineer, LinkedIn Inc. (7 weeks)
o Development Contract. iPhone project (SDK). Developed using Xcode,
Interface Builder, & Cocoa touch.
This was a seven-week contract. I was the third member of a team that
created a fully developed sophisticated iPhone client-app for LinkedIn's
social-networking service. My two permanent co-workers were very
experienced and talented, and together we created the application from
scratch, completing it in 7 weeks. It is now available for downloading
from Apple's AppStore as LinkedIn.

My role was to act as a resource for Cocoa and Xcode questions (since I
had worked with Cocoa longer than my two colleagues had), and to
implement some of the project's parts. I wrote the XML parser for
decoding the data streams from LinkedIn's RESTful server, and the code
for restoring the app's view-state after it has been quit. I also gave
advice on other parts of the app and on memory leaks (Instruments).

We followed scrum-like teamwork practices, and used the Subversion
source control management system. The 3 of us produced a large project:
186 Objective-C source files, 35 nib files, 51 images -- 272 files total
-- all in the space of 7 weeks.

Mac OS & Cocoa

Feb. 2006 - Feb. 2007 Consulting Software Engineer, 4G Color, Inc. (12 months)
o Development Contract. Mac OS X Cocoa project. Developed using Xcode
& Cocoa.
I worked on 4G Color's image-processing application called ColorBender
from its earliest stages through its 1.0 release at MacWorld 2007. (The
image-processing modules themselves, written in C, were the work of
my colleague.) I used the Cocoa frameworks, CoreFoundation, Quartz 2d,
CoreGraphics, and ImageIO.

2003 - 2005 {Intensive, systematic self-study of Cocoa. (2-1/2 years)}
o I studied Cocoa, Apple's advanced object-oriented programming framework.
I was determined during Silicon Valley's economic downturn, with its
dearth of Macintosh contracts, to make use of the contract-free period
to enhance my programming skills and learn Cocoa, which I saw as Apple's
future.

I read some or all of the eleven books on Cocoa, implementing all the
programming projects in the parts I read; the code I wrote for these
projects constitutes a resource I can tap into when faced with similar
programming tasks in the future.

Mac OS & C++

2002 - 2003 Consulting Software Engineer, TekSolutions. (12 months)
o Development Contract. Mac OS X device-driver project. Developed using Xcode
predecessor (ProjectBuilder).
USB user-level driver for a biosensor security device (finger-print
reader). The contract was performed by means of telecommuting.

2001 Consulting Software Engineer, TrueSAN Networks. (2 months)
o Development Contract. Mac OS X device-driver project. Developed using Xcode
predecessor.
My task was to design and code device-driver components for a host OS X
server in a multi-platform Storage Area Network system (SCSI/Fibre-Channel
disks). I designed an "I/O Kit" kernel extension (Mac device-driver).

2000 - 2001 Consulting Software Engineer, eMotion Corp. (3 months)
o Development Contract. Collaborative media-creation software group. Developed
using Metrowerks.
The product was a QuickTime-based media-collaboration client ("Annotation
Viewer") for Macintosh. My job was to add functionality to this
client/server application, which allowed users to attach multi-media files
to existing "Projects" residing on an NT server. Used http, XML,
CodeWarrior, and PowerPlant.

1999 - 2000 Consulting Software Engineer, Pixera Corp. (12 months)
o Development Contract. Macintosh software group. Developed using Metrowerks.
Designed and coded the user-interface for a high-end digital video camera
system for microscopes. Used C++, CodeWarrior, and PowerPlant.

1999 Consulting Software Engineer, OneWorld Systems (formerly
Global Village). (5 months)
o Development Contract. Developed using MPW & Metrowerks.
The product was FAX imaging software. I rewrote the product's setup
assistant for Mac clients, which prompts the user for personal information
and network configuration settings. C++, Metrowerks, CodeWarrior,
PowerPlant, AppleTalk.

1998 - 1999 Consulting Software Engineer, Sentius Corp. (3 months)
o Development Contract, RichLink Netscape-plugin for Mac.
C++, Metrowerks, GUI.

1998 Consulting Software Engineer, CyberSource. (4 months)
o Development Contract, SmartCert Software Development Group. Developed
using Metrowerks.
- Part of a two-man team that wrote a Macintosh client for an electronic
software-purchase and download system for the Internet. Used http protocols
to download a purchased file in streaming mode and unpack it into its
constituent files and folders complete with file attributes. Used
threading.

1996 - 1997 Consulting Software Engineer, Apple Computer. (18 months)
o Development Contract, R&D Information Systems and Technology Group (IS&T).
Developed using Metrowerks.
- Contributed new functionality (file enclosures) to Jade, Apple IS&T's
standard client-server development frameworks. Jade is the basis for
many internally-used programs, such as RADAR, Apple's bug-tracking
system. I was responsible for designing and coding the low-level
communications modules (TCP/IP and AppleTalk), including API and
network packet code. Used Metrowerks CodeWarrior and PowerPlant.
The 18-month contract required close cooperation among the five
team members.
- Automated the team's build process using AppleScript.

1994 - 1996 Senior Software Engineer, Asante Technologies. (2 years)
o Lead Development Engineer, Macintosh Group. Developed using Symantec's
C++ IDE & Metrowerks.
- Took over an existing large application (200,000 lines of code) written
in C and Think C++, extended and enhanced it. The application was a network
management program for controlling Asante smart hubs, bridges, and switches
using SNMP protocols on top of TCP/IP.

1994 Consulting Software Engineer, Intuit. (3 months)
o Development Contract, Quicken Macintosh Group. Developed using early
version of Metrowerks.
- Prototyped an extension to the Quicken personal accounting package.
For doing this I used Metrowerks' new 68K/PPC development environment
CodeWarrior and PowerPlant.

1993 - 1994 Consulting Software Engineer, ICON Medical Systems. (4 months)
o Development Contract, Image-Server Software Group. Developed using MPW.
- Designed, coded, documented, and tested an update-notification server,
together with a client API. AppleTalk and AppleEvents. 9,000 lines of
code; written in MPW C++.

1989 - 1993 Software Engineer, Apple Computer. (4 years)
o Development Engineer, Client-Server Software Group. Developed using MPW.
- Designed and implemented the AppleShare Remote Administration API
library using AppleEvents. This network API was developed for the manage-
ment of User & Groups, Access Privileges, Folder Copying, and runtime
Monitoring of the file server. Written in MPW C++.
- Designed and implemented an extensive command line application for
testing and performance tuning of the AppleShare Remote Administration
API library and server. The tool featured a command parser, a help
system, multi-level debugging modes, and input from either keyboard,
command files, or AppleEvents.

o Test-Developer, Networks & Communication Group. Developed using MPW.
- Designed and implemented automated test software for AppleShare using
sophisticated MPW scripting, VirtualUser [an Apple test language],
and C.

UNIX & C
1985 - 1989 Senior Software Engineer, Cumali Associates. (4 years)
Developed using UNIX tools.
- Based on SUN-3 workstation. Was one of two programmers implementing
a custom application incorporating a state-of-the-art air-conditioning
simulation/optimization/control model.

Pascal
1984 - 1985 Programmer, MicroSpectrum Software International. (12 months)
Developed using UCSD Pascal p-System.
Based on Apple III, Corvus network. Vertical job-shop application.

COBOL
1982 - 1984 Lecturer, Univ. of Maryland, Eur.Div.,Heidelberg, Germany.
& Taught: "Structured Programming", "Pascal", "Computer Math"
1975 - 1980 (Computer Science Dept.), "Formal Logic" (Philosophy Dept.).

1980 - 1982 Lead Programmer, Univ.of Maryland,Eur.Div,Student Recs.Dept.
Based on HP-3000. Designed the student-records database (for 100,000
students). Coded various programs for the system. Guided the other
programmers (COBOL).

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EDUCATION
Ph.D.(not completed) Univ. of Heidelberg (Heid., Germany), History & Philosophy
M.S. University of Chicago, European History
B.S. Northwestern University, Political Science & Economics
B.A. University of Chicago, Liberal Arts & Mathematics

Studies at the University of Heidelberg: focused on formal logic, set theory,
and the philosophy of science.

Courses at Various Places (since 1977):
IBM-360 assembler, COBOL, PL/1, 68000 assembler, C++, discrete math,
data structures, algorithms, searching & sorting, theory of computing,
operating systems, computer-language design, digital circuit design,
TCP/IP network programming, Java, Webpage design, etc.

Recent intensive self-study in Apple's Cocoa technology.

Courses at Apple Computer:
AppleTalk, Macintosh Debugging, C++, MacApp, AppleScript.

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HOBBIES AND INTERESTS
Astronomy, Greek philosophy, the history & foundations of mathematics, the
psychology of cats, listening to the music of Bach.

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Kins Collins, M.S. - Mac Software Engineer

Visitors since
22 jan 98