Jason C. Hughes
9001 Charnwood Ct.
Austin, TX 78729
panther-at-flaredev-dot-com
Cell: (512) 496-3424
Technical Skills
Programming
Over 6 years of C++; STL. 3D mathematics (quaternion and matrix); graphics. Steering behaviors, genetic algorithms, fuzzy logic, cellular automata; coordinated group AI. LEX & YACC; learning PCCTS. Win95/NT; POSIX. Pascal. Assembly.
Network Technology
Portability issues; localization issues. Perl; Cold Fusion; PHP3; JavaScript. SQL (Pro*C, MySQL, DBI). NQS. CGI. Sockets. XML. Distributed processing and clustering. Simultaneous client/server anonymous architecture. CSS. PDFL.
Methodology
Strong object oriented design methodology with emphasis on open, functional programming. Abstraction without over-generalization. Simplicity without sacrificing extension. Assertions and exceptions in favor to defensive programming and result codes. Use the right tool (or language) for the job.
Experience
Mar 2001—Nov 2001 Software Engineer, NewsStand, Austin TX
Hired to work on improving reliability and quality of back-end server processing. Quickly became familiar with various multi-machine solutions for parallel computation. Refactored a text parser so that it could easily accept XML input, developed multi-platform file layer, tightened assertions, and reduced interdependencies between modules. A major task was to write a web interface (Cold Fusion) for non-technical personnel for job control on the cluster, so complex tasks could be performed without unix logins. Rewrote search engine to scan through hundreds of newspaper issues in under a minute where the previous version would take several minutes per issue, through memory mapped dictionary trees.
Jan 1999—Feb 2001 Software Engineer III, Retro Studios, Austin TX
Lead AI programmer on NFL Football title. Project cancelled for missing market window. Created the underlying architecture for all levels of AI solutions for product. Acted as mentor to team, reviewed code, served as technical guru, managed and scheduled, and represented engineering staff to management. Also acted as general firefighter, owned the make/build process, and directed utilization of various technologies when appropriate to problem domains.
While in the Tools & Technology group, designed and implemented hardware abstraction layers, high level memory managers, runtime profilers, evaluated interfaces to low level systems, etc.
Mar 1995—Jan 1999 Advanced Software Eng., Origin Systems, Austin, TX
Developing first class 3D space flight arcade simulations for the PC platform. Involved in the software development process at every level.
Mar 1993–Mar 1995 Computer Operator, Motorola, Austin, TX
Maintained a wide variety of systems, from mainframes under VM to Macintosh Quickmail servers. I was also responsible for sensitive information in a physically secure environment.
Projects Shipped
NewsStand Reader (2001)
Primary responsibility was to improve content quality and back-end processing scalability. Publishers using system for online content distribution include top global publishers in Australia, Germany, the United States, and England, including luminaries such as the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Business A.M. and others.
Wing Commander: Prophecy (1997)
Primary responsibility was to design and implement the artificial intelligence and communications systems for all objects in the game world. Additional responsibilities included designing optimal data structures, system design, overall system structure, extending and maintaining a proprietary interpreted language. 3 CDs.
Wing Commander: The Kilrathi Saga (1996)
Three 16-bit DOS games ported to Windows 95 and packaged together. 5 CDs.
Wing Commander IV (1995)
Primary responsibility was ownership of all non-spaceflight code, providing extensions, rewriting large sections of existing code, maintaining the proprietary embedded interpreted language, program all controlling scripts for animations and menus, and process all graphics from source formats into the destination format. Rewrote 80386 assembly language bitmap draw primitives for RLE delta compressed video frames, developed a graphics tool for viewing and recompressing animated bitmap images to minimize size.
Education
1996-Present Withdrawn from undergraduate program to pursue career.
1993-1995 University of Texas at Austin, Computer Science
While a full time student, maintained a cumulative 3.5 GPA. Completed approximately two years of coursework, including all necessary mathematics.
Interests and Activities
Nov 15, 2001 Slashdotted in the Slashback section, for around 12000 hits.
Active koi pond enthusiast
Plays several musical instruments at varying levels of competence
Tournament pocket billiards player
Member of Zeta Psi Fraternity at University of Texas
Webmaster of Montiac.com, fan site for Monte Montgomery
Webmaster of Flaredev.com, homepages for myself and friends
Dec 2000 C/C++ Users Journal published my commentary in their Q&A section on defeating non-default constructors
1995-1996 Treasurer of Zeta Psi Fraternity at University of Texas
July 1995 C Users Group Library CD included my vesates2.zip graphics and low-level I/O library, all inline 386 assembly
1993-1995 Member of Association for Computing Machinery
Fall 1993 Won T-shirt design contest for ACM at UT (cool raytrace graphic)
References
Contact me for references
 18906