Michael Kölling

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Michael Kölling Ph.D is a German senior programming lecturer and software developer currently lecturing at the University of Kent. He is also a key member of the team that developed the BlueJ and Greenfoot Java learning environments. BlueJ is used in over 780 institutions world wide.[1] Kölling was also involved in the development of the Blue programming language[2] which was a object-oriented programming language that was developed especially for teaching. This lead on to what is now BlueJ.[3] BlueJ is currently being maintained by a joint team at the University of Kent at Canterbury and Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia.

Kölling co-wrote Objects First with Java (3rd edition), with David J. Barnes, which has been translated into German, Italian, French and Dutch.

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[edit] Microsoft Patient issue

On the 22nd May 2005 Kölling made an entry to the BlueJ website[4] in response to a post on Dan Fernandez's blog (Lead Product Manager - Visual Studio Express). Fernandez decribed a new feature of Visual Studio 2005 that "helps you understand objects at Design Time, rather then runtime."[5] This feature had striking similarities to the way the object test bench functions within BlueJ.

Kölling did not act on the discovery, however on May 11, 2006 Microsoft attempted to patent[6] the idea. As the object test bench is essential to the way it functions, had Microsoft's patent been granted, it was likely that BlueJ would have had to have been discontinued.

Kölling spoke to Microsoft, namely Jane Prey, and eventually the patent was dropped.[7]

Fernandez posted a response on his blog where he says "the patent application was a mistake and one that should not have happened. To fix this, Microsoft will be removing the patent application in question. Our sincere apologies to Michael Kölling and the BlueJ community."[8]

[edit] Trivia

  • Kölling received a "Best PhD Thesis Award" in 2000 from The Computing Research and Education Association of Australasia[9]
  • Kölling was awarded the first Victorian Pearcey Award for his development of BlueJ.[10]
  • Kölling took part in a debate titled "Resolved: Objects First has failed" at SIGCSE in 2005. He believes that "Objects First has not failed. We have failed to do it".[11]
  • Michael Kölling has a tattoo on his left arm.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ List of BlueJ users
  2. ^ Blue website
  3. ^ Blue status page (19 March 1999)
  4. ^ Comparison between VS and BlueJ's implementation of the object bench concept
  5. ^ Fernandez blog entry on the VS object test bench
  6. ^ Microsoft patent request
  7. ^ Blog article on Microsoft retraction of the patent
  8. ^ Fernandez blog apology
  9. ^ Best PhD Thesis Award
  10. ^ Victorian Pearcey Award
  11. ^ Position summary from SIGCSE debate
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