Resumé:
Jim Serwer
Software Consultant
408-985-6615
Send email

I, Jim Serwer, am a software developer with over 30 years experience in a wide variety of computers and disciplines. Since 1993, most work has been for Microsoft Windows.

I work in Silicon Valley, the general San Jose, California area. But I am not limited to Silicon Valley, as I have worked on projects for East-Coast clients, communicating by telephone and email.

Many of the projects on which I have worked are very different from one another. So different that one may wonder what I call my specialty, or even if I have a specialty. I see my specialty as problem solving, getting programs to work. It matters little to me whether the problem requires a particular language, operating system or discipline. Solving a problem can, and often does, entail all of the following activities.

• Web and Usenet information searches.
• Posting questions to help web sites.
• Asking advice at user-group meetings.
• Examining bits in hexadecimal dumps.
• Finding why an API call fails by tracing disassembled machine code through an operating system.
• Traditional use of debuggers including SoftICE, BoundsChecker, and Visual Studio.
• Debugging writes.
• Getting through to the right technical-support person.
• Et cetera.

Emails to technical support can be as much a part of programming as writing code and sniffing communications data.

Whether I am working on a device driver, or a Visual Basic application, my goal is to make the program work correctly. Having said that, most of my recent experience has been with Microsoft Windows, plus a heathy dose of embedded work.

I do not charge for learning time when the subject matter is of a general nature.

This web resume is divided into a number of pages. Each page covers a different topic. One web page toward the end of this resume is a list of contracts in reverse chronological order, similar to a conventional resumé. At the bottom of each page are links to the other pages. Please visit any pages that interest you. If you find anything at this web site confusing or inconvenient to navigate, please let me know by email.