MJH Software Services Ltd.

Michael first encountered APL in its incarnation as APL/SV in 1978 while at Durham University. His first commercial use was with IP Sharp Associates, where he had responsibility for several clients, including a major film company, a car manufacturer, and several banks using Sharp APL. Since becoming independent in 1983, Michael has consulted in most business areas, including actuarial and insurance, bond pricing, foreign exchange, aircraft movements, analysing and modelling based on direct marketing tests, and asset liability management (ALM). These tasks all involved different dialects of APL, including Dyalog, Sharp APL, APL2, APL+Win, and A+, running on various platforms such as mainframe, Linux, and Microsoft Windows PC/Server. Michael has been involved in many conversions between the various APL dialects and has thus gained extensive experience in this field. Recently Michael has concentrated on using Dyalog, and has been involved with a variety of projects, such as:

• performance improvements in actuarial calculations, both in terms of code changes and in utilising parallelisation techniques with multiple cores.
• performance improvements in genome data processing, both in terms of code changes and in utilising parallelisation techniques with multiple cores and GPU usage.
• working with Dyalog Ltd to develop their WPF strategy, producing a toolkit, documentation, and a WPF emulation of their APL/W Grid.
• assisting in the conversion of a large APL2 system to Dyalog on a Windows-based platform. This involved completing a WPF emulation of the GDDM screen manager in APL2.
• assisting in the building of a new front-end to a financial bond portfolio management system written using WPF.
• bespoke design and implementation of a WPF-based system for costing and analysing throughput of a recycling plant.

Although Michael is based in the UK, his clients are located all over the world. The working pattern depends on the size of the project, the amount of time needed on site, and how much can be done remotely. This differs from client to client, but usually a sensible mix can be achieved. His extensive APL experience, combined with his open-minded approach to modern technologies such as WPF, data binding, and parallel computing, have made Michael a much sought-after consultant and developer in the world of APL. He has taught workshops and presented his innovative ideas at some of the recent Dyalog user meetings  and at the London meetings of the British APL Association . Many of these ideas have been taken up by Dyalog Ltd, with whom Michael has a close working relationship whilst remaining an independent consultant.