Bio: John Dunn

Printer-friendly version

Bio: John Dunn
6-Mar-2002 -- Susan Pichotta
 
An artist and a programmer, John has been using Clarion since Version 1.0. He mentions tidbits about his experiences along the way, and offers an in-depth comparison of programming and art. He paid his board while living in Switzerland by working as a carpenter, and is now active in his town's government in Massachusetts. He's an obviously proud father, and enjoys beer, wine, and carrot juice. And for photos, think "H"s... Horses and Hawaii.
 

John & daughter Dori with her horse at Pony Farm

Who do you work for?
I work for myself and have been doing so since 1991. Actually, I have never worked full time for anybody but myself.
 
What do you like best about what you do now?
I enjoy the problem solving and creative aspects of programming as much as I enjoy working with my clients. It is very satisfying to know that the programs I develop make a real difference to those that use them.
 
Working for myself has been very enriching because I have been exposed to many different types of programming projects and worked with many people from around the world that I may not have been able to have otherwise.
 
What has been one of your biggest challenges in using Clarion?
Clarion is a really great tool for a single person programming company. The fact that it has so little market presence is sometimes a challenge, however. Few of my clients ask me about what my programs are written in but some do and the answer to that always leaves them asking: "What is Clarion?". I provide them with the "Why Clarion" information I have gathered but it is difficult to break through their resistance to go with an "unknown". The other challenge has been dealing with TPS corruptions on networks. I have not had many but it does happen occasionally and that usually means the client has to restore from a backup which can mean the loss of up to a day (or more) of work. (TPSFix has not always been able to adequately fix the corruption).
 
I worked on a Clarion SQL application early in the life of CW 2.0 and Clarion's SQL support at that time was not very good and it was a struggle to get it to work correctly. SQL support in CW5.X is a lot better but I look forward to more SQL integration in the templates.
 
What has been one of your biggest challenges in business?
Either having too little or too much work! I have been quite fortunate, so far, to not have had to look very hard or long for work. There is always a certain level of anxiety about where the next job will come from, however. Conversely, the demands of juggling four or five projects at once can be daunting. I have hired Clarion programmers at times to help out when the workload gets overwhelming. This helps but it also requires a fair amount of planning and management.

Daughter Devon jumping at Pony Farm

 
Do you use any computer languages besides Clarion?
Clarion is my main development language but I augment it with WinBatch and Power Basic. Before Clarion, I wrote applications in Pascal, Revelation, xBase and Cadol. Cadol was/is? a propriety programming language running on proprietary hardware and operating system developed by Cado Systems (with a name change at some point to VerSyss). I did a lot of work on Cado Systems before the IBM PC was developed. I purchased the first IBM PC model shortly after its debut and started writing PC versions of the Cado software I had been developing for the PC. I also did some work with MUMPS and played around with Forth and Modula 2.
 
When did you start using Clarion?
I bought version 1.0 of Clarion after trying many of the alternatives at the time. I was impressed by the Clarion ads in several of the magazines available for IBM PCs. Those ads displayed actual Clarion code and compared it with similar code in other languages. It seemed very lean and clean. I liked the fact that just about everything needed for application development was in the box. The work I had been doing in Pascal required several third party libraries that never really worked well together so the Clarion experience was very refreshing. I hated the dongle that was required with version 1.0 and was elated when the decision was made to drop it.
 
What's the coolest project(s) you've worked on using Clarion?
I built and maintain a large Medical Records and MDS (HCFA required Minimum Data Set Assessment tool) system for Long Term Care facilities that is used across the country. One of the big challenges was automating the MDS to meet HCFA's requirements which are always changing. Part of my solution was to build intelligence into the data that drives the MDS assessments. The on-screen assessment forms are built within the program and can be easily modified at run time as the requirements change. Printing the assessment forms was another challenge because they are incredibly dense. Far too dense to create all of the controls needed on a single page in the report formatter. The forms were built with an older form creation tool called Transform and then converted to small WMF files. These are used as background images on the report and the data is printed on top of the images.
 
Have you done anything for a living other than software development?
I went to university to study, and have a degree in, Fine Arts. I spent many years as an artist/painter working in my studio half of the day and programming the other half to make ends meet. I used to get a quizzical look when I told people what I did.
 
A lot of people do not see the connection between art and programming. Actually, I find that there is a lot that is similar. The end result is vastly different and the aim of art is not the aim of programming but the process is very much alike. Programming requires a lot of creativity. Within a set of limits we work with raw material (the language syntax) and make decisions that build upon earlier decisions that creates a structure with a logic of its own. It is often the intensity of the decision making that yields the best work.
 

Dori with her horse at Pony Farm

It is sometimes true, too, that accidents and mistakes can play as crucial a role in programming as it does in art. This is especially true when working with clients that know what they want but cannot express it or do not fully know what they want until they see it.
 
I remember working on a therapist treatment tracking system which involved quite a few meetings to hammer out a set of specifications for the program. Everybody involved thought we had a good handle on the requirements until about a third of the program was built and they started to "see" how things were working. A new player was introduced who brought up an issue which had bearing on almost everything that had been done to that point. This required a lot of the code to be torn apart, rethought and reworked. That process informed the new work in a way that could not have been anticipated by analysis. It led to a much better solution than was originally expected.
 
Other than Art and programming, I worked part time for my father's business as a truck driver and later as a programmer while going to school. Later, I worked in a book store in Philadelphia. I also worked with a missionary in Italy and helped renovate a house in Switzerland. In high school I worked for the Audubon Society as a nature camp counselor as well as participated in several large field studies of Leopard and Pickerel Frogs and Read Ear Slider Turtles.
 
What are your hobbies/what do you like to do when you're not using Clarion?
I love to read, listen to music, attend concerts, plays and the cinema. I like to look at and collect art: drawings, paintings and photographs. I read fiction (Isaac Bashevis Singer, Updike, Hemingway, Tolstoy, Gorky) and a lot of non-fiction. Over the past few years I have been reading much of the literature coming out of China since the death of Mao Zedong (Tse-Tung) (read the work of Anchee Min, especially her brilliant: 'Becoming Madame Mao") along with many of the books written about or by victims of the holocaust.
 
A recent highlight is a two volume edition of a diary written by Victor Klemperer titled "I Will Bear Witness". It is an incredible and meticulous chronicle of the Nazi years between 1933 and 1945. Victor Klemperer was a Jewish professor who lived in Dresden and kept a diary for most of his life. He was barely spared the death camps because he was married to an "Aryan" as well as a lot of luck. He kept his secret diary throughout the Nazi years even though he risked his and his wife's life doing so. He astutely recognized the threat of Hitler in the early thirties and his dairy shows the many small changes and incidents that eventually consume their lives and the lives of those around them.
 
I also volunteer a lot of my time doing work for our town. In 1988 I helped start our recycling program. I was the chair of the recycling committee and worked at the recycling center for many years. I was also appointed to a committee that worked on the mandated closure of our unlined landfill and the creation of our new transfer station and recycling center. Since then, for the past five years, I have been an elected member of the Board of Health. The responsibilities of Board's of Health are wide ranging and it has been very gratifying learning about and acting on the issues that come before the Board.
 
Married, children, grandchildren, other close family you want to mention?
I am married to my wife, Sue. We have been married for almost 26 years. I met Sue in Switzerland when I was living in Italy and traveling and she was going to

Devon, Dori, Sue & John at Kaena Point in Hawaii

school in Fribourg, Switzerland. Our daughters are Devon who is 17 and Dori who is 14. Sue and the girls are pretty serious equestrians so, naturally, we have our own barn, pasture and riding area. The girls have been going to horse riding camp every summer for last few years and love it.
 
Where were you born?
I was born in Augusta, Georgia where my father was stationed in the Army before going to fight in the Korean war.
 
Where do you live now?
I live in Bolton, Massachusetts. Bolton is a fairly rural community about an hour west and north of Boston. There are about 4000 residents in town but we are facing a lot of pressure from development. That is part of what has made being a member of the Board of Health so exciting and difficult. We are trying, as a town, to maintain our rural character but realize that growth is inevitable. Part of our job is to try to manage that growth in way that maintains the health and safety of our residents as well as the environment.
 
What's interesting about where you live?
The sense of community here is very important to us. We live in a place where all of the town offices are run by volunteers. Many residents give a lot of their time and energy to making the town work. Our town meetings are well attended and we have a real voice in town matters.
 
I also love being fairly close to Cambridge and Boston. Boston has a lot of to offer culturally. New York City is not far away either. We are also only a few hours away from great wilderness areas in New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine.
 
Have you lived any other interesting places?
I lived in Italy for a year working and going to school. I also traveled all over Europe for another year. After that I lived in Switzerland working with a friend there renovating his house. It was a great arrangement. He gave me room and board in exchange for several hours of work a day. We would get up at four in the morning and work until eight or nine in the morning and then would be free for the rest of the day. We had a great time. His house was a very old four story sandstone building in the old section of Fribourg. I remember the time we had to hire the city fire ladder (along with the fire man) to brush down the exterior sandstone of the house. It was a mechanical ladder and we had to be cranked up to the fourth story, creating an interesting sight for the onlookers below.
 
We travel to Europe almost every year and have visited and stayed with friends in Sweden, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Ireland, Switzerland, England and Italy.
 

Devon, my mother (Lee), Sue, me, Dori and my father (John)

My parents live in Hawaii half of the year and in recent years we have been visiting during Christmas and New Year. It is such a beautiful and interesting place and the weather is perfect!
 


Which person, from past or present, do you most admire and why?
I really admire the work of the not too well know Italian painter Giorgio Morandi, the work of Alberto Giacometti, James Ensor, Bonnard, Myron Stout, De Chirico, De Kooning (and many others), the photographs of Diane Arbus, Alfred Stieglitz, Eugene Atget, Brassai, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, Joel Meyerowitz, etc.
 
What is your favorite food?
I have been a vegetarian for over twenty years and a vegan (no fish, milk, cheese, eggs, etc.) for at least fifteen years. I love to cook, however, and do most, if not all of the food shopping and cooking in our house. I like many ethnic foods: Indian, Thai, Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, Ethiopian, Greek, Vietnamese, etc.
 
Almost every week I try to cook a new recipe. I have a growing vegetarian cook book collection and there are some great recipes in them. One our recent favorites is Potato Chickpea Stew. It is a hearty, full bodied vegetable stew that is great in the cold months.
 
As much as possible, I like to eat whole, unprocessed foods. I like fresh vegetables and brown rice, whole soybeans and tempeh (a fermented soy product) and seitan (made from wheat gluten). I also really love Mochi and eat it often for lunch. Mochi is made from a glutinous, sweet brown rice that is cooked and mashed into a paste. It is then formed into little tiles or bricks that are baked. In baking they puff up and become soft and delicious inside.
 
What is your favorite drink?
Carrot juice. I don't have it too often but whenever a restaurant offers it or I have the time to make it I love it. After that, I like a lot of the soy milks that are available. I also like good, dry red wines, Guinness (in Ireland) and Belgian beers. The beer in Belgium is terrific with many complex and subtle flavors.

Devon riding at Pony Farm

 
What is your favorite type of music?
The Boston and New England area is a Mecca for live music. There is a very strong acoustic, world music and jazz scene here supporting many great independent singer/song writers. We go to a lot of concerts in great, small venues like Club Passim in Cambridge (the old club 47 where Joan Baez/Bob Dylan (and many others) started out). We also hosted a house concert for Dori's birthday this fall. It was really good and a lot of fun.
 
I have a very large music collection. I collect music from all over the world including music from many of the African countries, India, Ireland, England, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Tibet, Turkey, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, etc.. I love music that challenges and surprises me or that offers some deep insight with the economy and precision of poetry. I find most commercial radio to be an anathema to that idea and can rarely stand to listen to much of it.
 
If Clarion never existed, what do you think you would be doing at this time?
I might be painting more! <g> My work with Clarion has become more of the focus in my life and if it never existed I probably would be developing with another language or development system. I like the independence of programming on my own and being able to make a living doing something that I have a lot of fun doing. I like the fact that I do not have to commute and that programs are weightless and do not take up much space in the world (except for the hardware needed to run it... arrgh). The best experience for me, whether making or looking at art, listening to music, reading a novel, or programming, is when the perception of time falls away effortlessly and I am living in the moment.
 
Anything else you want to mention?
The bios are great. l really enjoy learning about those of us in the Clarion community. Thanks to Sue and Arnor for coming up with the idea and making them available.
 

Devon's horse Cicely in front of our barn