- John Socha
John Socha-Leialoha is a
software developer best known for creatingNorton Commander , the firstorthodox file manager . The original Norton Commander was written forDOS . Over the years, Socha's design for file management has been extended and cloned many times.John grew up in the woods of
Wisconsin , earned a BS degree in Electrical Engineering fromUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison , and his PhD in Applied Physics fromCornell University . He now lives inSeattle with his wife and son.Independent work
In the early days of the
IBM PC , John Socha wrote a column for the now defunct magazineSoftalk , where he published such programs as ScrnSave, KbdBuffer (extending the keyboard buffer), and WhereIs (finding files on a hard disk)."ScrnSave" was the first
screensaver ever createdFact|date=May 2008. John Socha also coined the term "screen saver"Fact|date=May 2008. The built-in screensaver (night sky with stars) was one of the most distinctive features of Norton Commander, along with the famous two-panel blue screen.When
Peter Norton Computing was acquired bySymantec in1990 , John Socha left to found his own company, "Socha Computing Inc." The new company developed theMicrosoft Plus! add-on pack forWindows 95 , and also developed screensavers forWindows 98 . InJuly 1997 Socha Computing was acquired byAsymetrix .Since
October 2003 , John has devoted himself to his long-standing hobby of model railroading. He is co-founder of [http://www.newrailmodels.com/ New Rail Models] .In
December 2004 , John Socha co-authored [http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/04/12/NETCompactFramework/default.aspx Optimize Your Pocket PC Development with the .NET Compact Framework] for "MSDN Magazine".Norton Commander
John Socha described his work on NCref|Bezr:
:I started work on what became known as the Norton Commander in the fall of
1984 while I was still a graduate student in Applied Physics at Cornell University. The first versions were entirely in assembly language, but that was too time-consuming, so I soon switched to a blend of C and assembly language at a time when most "real programmers" wouldn't touch C.:At the time I called it "Visual DOS", with the abbreviation of "VDOS" instead of the usual two-letter abbreviations used at the time. The program itself was inspired by several things coming together. I had a contract to write some books for Microsoft Press and actually spent some time in Bellevue, WA working on site. I'd take two months off from graduate school and write a book.
:The second book was to be a book of small utility programs like I used to write for Softalk Magazine (such as whereis, scrnsave, etc.), but I never finished writing the book because one small utility took on a life of its own.
John Socha continued work on his VDOS program after joining Peter Norton Computing as their first director of
research and development . In1986 the software product was released under the name of Norton Commander.Socha also led the development team of
Norton Utilities for the Macintosh computer platform.John has written a number of technical books published under the
Peter Norton name, including the best-selling "Peter Norton's Assembly Language Book" (ISBN 0-13-661901-0).Other work
John has many other projects including controllers for train models and mobile application design.
John is a private pilot and owns Daisy, a plane featured in books by
Richard Bach .References
* Nikolai Bezroukov (2005). [http://www.softpanorama.org/OFM/Paradigm/Ch03/norton_commander.shtml The History of Development of Norton Commander (NC line of OFMs)]
* Co-authored "Teach Yourself... Visual Basic 5" forMIS Press withDan Rahmel and Devra Hall.
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