My name is actually John D'Ausilio, but Wiki links seem to dislike both apostrophes and last names with more than one capital letter.

I'm a Java/OO developer, currently (Nov 99) working for Kyrus Corporation. I've spent the last 10 years or so writing various forms of Point of Sale systems (first in C and Foxpro, now in Java) and various supporting systems for general retail, convenience stores, and currently K12 school foodservice.

My first 'real' OO/Java development effort happened in March of 1999. Having learned Java syntax and experimented with it for a few months, I convinced my manager to let me spend a bunch of money by hiring some experienced Developer/OOAD/Mentor type persons and chug out a new POS system for school cafeterias. I retained DecisionSmith and worked with SalimaFassil, SteveWirts and EricLazarus on the project, which in hindsight looks remarkably like an amalgam of the ExtremeProgramming and DeathMarch patterns. We did deliver a beta-quality project in just under 5 weeks which was stable enough for installation into a school prior to the trade show (which let the marketing guys claim that it had been 'installed'). I did learn a heck of a lot about OOAD and Java, and actually felt very comfortable with the code by the end of the project. I was declared a hero, and was awarded a trip to OOPSLA for my dedication (which triggered a rant about how to MotivateProgrammers). The code turned out to be very robust, easily changeable and generally nice to be around.

My next task is to convince them to let me build an XP team and tackle the rest of our product suite. 

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