Development is more complicated than it used to be. No longer can you lock the nerd in the closet to code to his/her heart’s content. Program management, IT integration, product management, architecture and design, developer operations, data integration, security and scalability, will all be part of the development leader’s challenge.
It now takes a rare developer who can handle all aspects of the development challenge – from full stack software development to quality assurance testing, from beta program development and execution to development operations, from security design and data privacy compliance to localization, from customer and executive communications to white-board architectural drawings and source-code review.
FountainBlue understand these underlying issues and offer integrated, comprehensive development services which provide our entrepreneurial and executive clients the operational and technical advantage. Whether the challenge is optimizing development, IT and architecture or reviewing and vetting code and build systems, our end-to-end management and development services ensure effective, efficient and strategic implementations which align stakeholders and deliver measurable results.
Barry Holroyd – Software Engineering Technical Lead for Android-based development and build systems
Barry has over 30 years of experience in the software industry spanning numerous technologies, both as a hands-on developer and as a manager and executive, including founding his own consulting company and growing it to a valuation of $3M.
Now specializing in Android development, Barry’s deep Android-related knowledge spans a breadth of related technologies, including the Android API itself, Java, Groovy, Gradle and common supporting technologies such as Git.
Barry applies his extensive technical and management experience, along with his deep knowledge of Android, to a wide range of projects including: hands-on Android and/or Java development, development/enhancement of Gradle build systems, and management of Android-related teams and/or projects.
Barry completed dual Bachelor’s Degrees in Computer Science and Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.
General Technical Experience and Expertise:
- As founder and CEO of Green Light Immersion, developed the Android app Evermore, which provides a robust integration of numerous search technologies in an easy-to-digest visual format, featuring 16,000 lines of hand-written code.
- As Founder and CEO of Galatia, developed and prototyped SaaS applications and provided 24×7 hosting for high-profile clients including AEA Credit Union, Agilent, Cisco, CNET, EPRI, Irwin Home Equity, San Francisco Examiner, SOFTBANK, Stanford, UCLA, United Way.
- As a Principal Architect at Oracle, led a small tiger team to produce Oracle’s first implementation of CORBA, an industry standard distributed object system.
- As CTO for MyMiniPeeps, managed the creation of a scalable, multiplayer world with an engaging set of environments to explore, games to play, social networking support (in-world chat, IM and email; buddy lists; shared home instances and furnishings), virtual currencies (several monetary and point systems) and numerous other features (e.g., teleporting, parent portal), all on minimal funding.
- As a consulting architect for Heartwood Studios, developed a 3D prototype demo, along with a small Windows-based database management application for a large defense contractor.
- As Technical Director at Jamcracker, managed a team of 40+ that delivered an advanced n-tier, highly distributed web-based portal that aggregated multiple Application Service Providers (ASPs) into a single system.
- As VP of Engineering at Vello, led the engineering of business-quality audio conferencing products (web and mobile) from scratch. Product line included early mobile applications.
Specific Android Development Background and Management Expertise:
Android Development – Knowledge and experience to develop full Android applications, end-to-end.
- Design and implement full Android applications.
- Write, refactor, or extend Android (or other Java code base) applications, libraries and tools.
- Write unit and integration tests.
Android IT – Ability to create and/or extend existing Android build environments.
- Maintain and extend the Android build system, based on the industry standards Groovy (an extension of Java) and Gradle (the domain-specific language, written in Groovy, which is used to defined the Android build system).
Team Management
- Extensive experience managing teams of all sizes, including mobile teams ranging in size from 5 to 60.
Customer-Facing, Technical Program Management Experience and Expertise
- As founder and CEO of a web consultancy, served as technical and business program lead for Fortune 100 companies in the financial services, academia, government and technology sectors, leading a technical lead on multi-year, multi-million dollar, web-based implementations for five years.
- As technical lead for several tech start-ups, worked with a network of funders, clients, partners and team members to secure funding, implement personalized solutions, and manage day-to-day development, security and operations.
Example Demo Apps
- User Demo: Evermore is an extensive, map-based travel planning application which provides a visual integration of search technologies. Multiple searches using multiple search engines can be applied across multiple areas, with all the results being displayed simultaneously on a single map. An alternate “list” view shows each individual search result with relevant information displayed: an arrow pointing in the physical direction of the result, the distance to the result, etc. — all dynamically updated.The implementation consists of 150 Java files with 16,000 lines of handwritten code. Evermore is available in the Google Play Store. Extensive documentation, including a FAQ, a full reference section and several simple tutorials, is available as Help from the app or directly from the web site. Source code and detailed documentation regarding its architecture is also available.Download the app
- User Documentation
- Developer Documentation
- Source code is available upon request.
Technical Demo: High Performance Product Listing
ProdListHpDemo is a well-documented, well-written technical demonstration of a high performance “list” implementation. I recommend this code base to anyone who would like to get a feel for the quality of code that I write in a professional capacity. In addition to being well designed and well documented, it provides the following performance-related features.
- Images downloaded in the background. Two implementations are provided: AsyncTask-based and threads-based.
- Initial image url retained as a field and compared to the (potentially updated) URL of the ViewHolder upon image arrival.
- Configurable look-ahead pre-loading.
- Configurable memory cache.
- Configurable disk cache.
There are numerous cache configuration settings available so that you can see the effects of the caches in use.
As this is a technical demo its user-facing functionality is small (a simple list of products pulled from Walmart via the Walmart Open API along with a separate screen to display individual products). Relatively little attention was paid to the user interface.
ProdListHpDemo Source Code Documentation
By Numbers
- 15: Years as an engineering leader.
- $70M: Annual revenues for Database Editions (Veritas).
- $84M: Annual revenues of War Commander (Kixeye).
- $3M: Valuation of the web development firm I founded.
- 60: Team size managed.
- 1: Importance of game at Zynga (Farmville2Mobile).
- 4: Number of startups.
- 15: Years as a hands-on developer.
- 2: Years of studying Android.
- 16,000: Lines of Java code in my show case Android app (Evermore).
By Hard Skills
- Languages: Java, C, C++, C#, Perl, PHP, Python, SQL
- Mobile: Android, Groovy, Gradle, SQLite, (light) iOS
- Databases: MySQL, Oracle, MSSQL
- SCCS: Git, Subversion, CVS, SCCS, RCS
- OS: Linux, Microsoft
- Web: HTML, CSS, JavaScript
- Cloud: AWS, Heroku
By Soft Skills
- Vast experience building and leading teams of varying sizes (engineering, tech. pubs., QA).
- Deep experience with startups of all sizes (funding: $0 – $170M, headcount: 2 – 350).
- Solid understanding of both business drivers and technology: focused on solving problems.
- Strong belief in human potential: happy people make fantastic employees.
- Lead by example: honest, focused, purposeful, direct.
- Excellent communication, both written and verbal.
- Excellent at customer and partner relations.
By Experience
- Green Light Immersion (2015 – 2016): Studying Android
- Kixeye (2013 – 2014): Technical Director of Game Engineering
- Zynga (2013 – 2013): Director of Engineering
- Green Light Immersion (2011 – 2012): Consulting (RLP Architect, Heartwood acting VPE)
- Masher Media (2009-2011): CTO
- Vello (2006 – 2009): VP of Engineering
- Symantec (2002 – 2006): Director of Engineering
- Jamcracker (2000 – 2002): Director of Engineering
- Galatia (1995 – 2000): CEO/CTO
- Oracle (1994 – 1995): Principal Architect
- Sun Microsystems (1987 – 1994): Senior Engineer
By Education
- Bachelor of Arts, Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley
- Bachelor of Arts, Psychology, University of California, Berkeley