Mark Lentczner

I love to write software that is clear, useful and beautiful. Great software should proceed from clarity of thought and vision, fulfill the user's needs, and conjure a sense of beauty and respect.

Over the years I have created this kind of software many times, individually, as part of a team, and most often by leading a team.

via e-mail: mark (at) glyphic (dot) com

via phone: 650/533-6656

N.B: Printing this page will restyle it for printing.

I am currently Staff Software Engineer at Google. I currently work in the area of Network Architecture.

For my first two years, I worked in the area of security research, looking at new security primitives and systems for web applications. The Belay Project developed new methods of performing authorization without authentication. The project is open source.

I have been an active member of the Haskell community including organizing the yearly BayHac event in Silicon Valley, co-organizing monthly meetups, and teaching introduction courses and videos.

I am the release manager of Haskell Platform. I am responsible for coordinating the community in determining the contents of the release, the source release, the Mac OS X release, and the web site.

I was responsible for the revamp of the HTML output of Haddock, and led a small team to modernize and improve the look and utility of Haskell documentation.

I was Sr. Systems Architect at Linden Lab building the virtual world Second Life. I was responsible for guiding technical product design and architecture, both within engineering and with the corporate leadership. I was also the technical leader of Linden's interoperability efforts, and the architect of the Virtual World Region/Agent Protocol.

Note: My corporate "avatar" was named Zero Linden, and much of my writing on my work can be found under that name.

Wheat is an experimental programming language and environment for web and internet programming. Principal designer and implementor.

See: http://wheatfarm.org/

Context Free is computer generated image environment. Ported to both Macintosh OS X, Windows with full graphic user interfaces. Ported to Posix/Unix with command line interface.

Community of Variation is book of 64 works by 29 artists who use Context Free. I am the editor, author, book designer, and publisher.

See: http://www.ozonehouse.com/ContextFree/

Glyphic was a software design consulting company. Managed and grew business from one employee to ten. Dealt with all aspects of the business including planning, getting new business, project management and engineering.

See: http://www.glyphic.com/

Below is a list of some corporate projects during this period.

Design of new cross-platform graphic user interface to existing product. Detailed investigative design process, project team management, implementation.

Redesign and implement system level sub-systems for client's mobile Internet browser: text entry, memory manager, and persistent storage architecture. Created performance analysis of existing architectures, designed and implemented new architectures.

The investigation and design of a fast and memory efficient Java virtual machine for a chip manufacturer. The project involves analysis of Java execution and garbage collection and using that analysis build an efficient Java implementation on the client's hardware.

The design and prototyping of client's first Internet browser for cellular phones. Assisted in the design of client's markup language, HDML 1.0 and later 2.0, and created first applications for cellular phones using this technology. Later, design and implementation of a compact version of the browser with new over-the-air protocols.

Glyphic was founded with the goal of creating a new programming language and environment. Primary design vision. Implementor and designer of language and libraries. Marketed the product and work on major contract to produce the system for EO.

See: http://www.glyphic.com/

Assisted in the Design and Development of Interactive Essays. This project of Alan Kay's group created web-based essays that people can directly interact with to learn about various topics. The project made use of Glyphic's Codeworks development environment and Glyphic Script programming language.

Ported Glyphic Script to the PenPoint platform. The port include extensive integration with the host operating system, and customization to match the PenPoint's user interface.

The design and implementation of Glyphic Script, Glyphic's object oriented programming language and Codeworks a direct manipulation development environment.

Member of the team that implemented the application framework for the PenPoint operating system. Designed and implemented cross-application find and replace framework. Redesigned and implemented message dispatch and method lookup mechanism for entire system.

Manager of Apple's Sound Research Group, and then later the Music Products Group. Developed corporate wide sound and music strategies working closely with marketing. Led engineering team that designed and implemented the MIDI Manager for Macintosh OS, built a sound research lab, and conducted research into hardware and software for sound and music. Was the first manager of the Operating Systems Research group, part of which went on to produce System 7.

Founded Apple's Sound Research Group. Designed and implemented the Sound Manager for Macintosh OS. Designed, lobbied for, and worked on many additions to the Macintosh II platform for sound, including working on the Apple Sound Chip.

Worked on the Apple Smalltalk implementation and integration with Macintosh OS and the MacApp application framework.

Bachelor of the Arts in Applied Mathematics as Applied to Music. Undergraduate thesis was the design of a programming language for music composition, advised by Prof. Thomas E. Cheatham and the composer Ivan Tcherepnin. Graduated Magna cum Laude.