sascom voices - The sascom magazine blog

David Biesack is a Research and Development Software Developer at SAS.

What are you working on right now?
I'm investigating programming languages for very large scale distributed analytics, so that SAS can solve problems which can only fit on a grid of computers. There is a fascinating diversity of research in languages, distributed algorithm, and data distribution design these days, and some very difficult problems to solve. I also support collaboration within SAS R&D by developing and tending saspedia, the SAS R&D wiki.

What are you reading?
I'm in the middle of two books right now. I'm just finishing Al Franken's "The Truth (With Jokes). My parents gave me Rapture for the Geeks: When AI Outsmarts IQ by Richard Dooling for Christmas, which is a pleasure to read because I'm exactly the right audience for such a book. I also enjoy reading Discover magazine.

What industry trends are you watching?
I'm tracking the mainstreaming of grid computing in the business sector. Grid computing is not just for scientific computing, where it has been widely adopted. Financial and other enterprises are adopting grids because of these organizations' projected data and analysis requirements often outpace other technologies' ability to match their growth curves.

What did you learn today?
Today, I'm learning more about MPI (Message Passing Interface) and Google's protocol buffers. Like I said, "Rapture for the Geeks"...

What do you do to unwind after a long day's work?
I often do my unwinding at lunch time, either by running or playing volleyball. At home, I either catch up with the family over dinner, or meet up with them at one of my kid's soccer or softball or volleyball games. I also coach youth volleyball. Like many of my colleagues, I provide computer and internet tech support for friends and family. I also manage the websites and do desktop publishing for some non-profit peace organizations. I'm also an amateur photographer.