I like writing. I actually like typing. My Dad and I used to frequent second-hand shops where I grew up in Cheltenham in the 1950s. I remember buying oddities such as thermometers and barometers. But the thing that really captured my imagination was a typewriter. It must have been fairly crude or very old. Instead of the typical action where the typebars fly over in an arc, these typebars slid forward. Nonetheless I loved it. My aunty, who worked as a typist at that time, bought me a copy of Pitman’s Touch Typing course and I actually learned to do it. I still touch type.
When it came to earning a living however, it was rabbiting on that brought in the income. So I spent most of my time delivering courses and consulting. Writing was confined to course notes – which was enjoyable enough.
After quite a few years of travelling two or three times a month to customers around Europe and occasionally further afield, I wanted some time at home. By that time I felt I’d discovered a few things and had one or two contributions of my own to make. So I took four months off and wrote a textbook for Addison Wesley, the details of which can be found in companion pages on this site. I enjoyed writing the words. But creating the illustrations was hard work. And creating exercises and answers was a grim grind indeed.
I’d obtained a decent advance for the book, but by the time it was finished I had to get back on the road. There were no more books. I did write a few articles however.
Here are some of those articles. They were usually written to support the tutorials and lectures. Some were to support the Object-0riented Analysis and Design book but are perhaps of more general relevance.
There may only be few at the moment. I am adding them as I find them in the archives, or as broken links tell me I’ve referenced something that I haven’t yet put here.