Hank Roark

I am the Senior Architect for Agris Corporation, a division of John Deere. I can be reached at mailto:hroark@acm.com.

I am an ENTP (I used to be an ENTJ, but the life as a consultant has changed me. Now nothing is ever settled in my life.) I think P's have more fun than J's.

I am a reformed CppProgrammer? now prefering to use Java. Java, mainly because of the market focus (I suspect), is a much more enjoyable language with better tools. I don't know how I ever lived without MetaObjects? and an Envy-like environment (ala VisualAge For Java).

My interests these days are focused on what does it take to turn someone from a OO-language expert to an OO expert (i.e.: Why does the person next to me know so much about C++ (for example) and yet so little about OO and the idioms that go along with it?). Also, I am interested in why there seems to be so few good OO people.

I commonly recommend Thinking in C++ ISBN 0139177094 and Thinking in Java ISBN 0136597238 to people wishing to learn OO. I love Design Patterns (GOF) but find it difficult to those new to OO to understand. As such, I am now recommending ObjectOrientedDesignHeuristics by Arthur J. Riel ISBN 020163385X , Designing Object-Oriented C++ Applications : Using the Booch Method by Robert Martin ISBN 0132038374 , and TheCrcCardBook by David Bellin and Susan Suchman Simone ISBN 0201895358 . All are excellent and tend to get developers thinking in terms of objects quickly.

I hang out on AOL Instant Messenger as roarkhh3. Feel free to chat with me.

At one point, I was the coach for the XpAtlanta project.

Isn't HankRoark the name of an AynRand protagonist?

Hank Roark is two AynRand heroes in one. Howard Roark was the hero of TheFountainhead?; Hank Rearden was a hero of AtlasShrugged.

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