Kurt Schmidt started in mathematics, earning a BA with honors. He continued to grad school, pursued an MS, and was offered an opportunity to get another MS in computer science. Turns out he’s a better programmer than mathematician (though he retains his love of math).
In school, he concentrated on data structures, language theory, and symbolic computation. After school, he worked on message switches, and planning and monitoring tools for communication networks, rounding out his programming knowledge (system and networking, databases, etc.). Kurt generally avoided the GUI side of things, interested more in design, and bit-pushing. He also took an early interest in command-line tools and scripting. He spent a little time working on a proprietary language that supported creation of network architectures. He was a long-hair in C, C++, OO programming, scripting in Vax and Unix/Linux.
Missing the classroom, Kurt taught a night class, usually a C+Unix graduate bridge course. He returned to teaching full time in the early 00s, teaching mostly 2nd- and 3rd-year classes: data structures, C+Unix, language theory, and math foundations of CS, and early on, calculus. He still enjoys helping to shape students into programmers, and spreading enthusiasm for the tools of the trade.
