ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Ledgard received his B.A. from Tufts University and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969. After a postgraduate year at Oxford, he joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University where he was influenced by the design ideas of Harlan Mills.
After two years at Johns Hopkins, he joined the faculty at the University of Massachusetts. Mainly through his work with Andrew Singer, he developed theories and ideas for the practice of software human engineering - that is, the human user seems to have been disregarded in the drive for more powerful systems. He came to believe that broader approaches based on the human comprehension of programs hold the key.
In 1977, Dr. Ledgard participated in the Ada project, the design of a new programming language led by Jean Ichbiah. The project itself was noteworthy in that not only were such issues as the role of program modules and the potential of separate compilation discussed, but seemingly innocuous issues such as the appropriate use or non-use of comments and program layout were considered with a positive emphasis toward more professional programming.
In 1983 and 1984, Dr. Ledgard served as tutor in several seminars offered as the "Senior Software Engineering Course" sponsored by Philips Electronics. The courses were under the brilliant guidance of Dr. Allen Macro. The students were professional software engineers with varying degrees of experience, released from their duties for seven weeks to devote their full efforts to this seminar. Free discussion periods emphasized working habits of programmers, naming in programs, and how schedules affect the quality of a project. In addition to Philips project, Dr. Ledgard has been a consultant to Digital Electronics Corporation and Alsys, Inc.
In 1979, he established his own consulting, seminar, and writing practice. Among his books are An Early Monograph On Human Factors, The Programming Proverbs series, "Ada: An Introduction", "Elementary Basic" and "Elementary Pascal" (co-authored with Andrew Singer), and "Programming Language Landscape" (co-authored with Michael Marcotty), "Professional Software" (with John Tauer). In 1996, he completed "The Little Book of Object Oriented Programming", which is based on a work with Michael Marcotty.
In the past several years he has been working with Bill Cave of Predictions Systems Inc. Mr. Cave and his company have developed a wonderful technology for software development. This technology is called VisiSoft (for Visual Software Enviromment).
Dr. Ledgard's professional areas are software engineering, human factors, and programming languages.
He believes that the right kind of exercise is intriguing, both intellectually and personally. He enjoys golf, movies, and reading.
Copyright 2005, EECS Department, University of Toledo, Toledo, OH
Designed by Pranav Rao, Ph.D. Student, Computer Science