Introduction

My name is L. Frank Turovich and I've been writing documentation and training in the software industry for 16+ years. It all started with a article published in Nibble Mac called "The MacCipher Machine" and I haven't stopped yet. Since then I've worked on variety of technologies and platforms.

My main interests are in user interfaces, documentation, and training. Making it easy for the user to understand and use the software without resorting to the docs if possible. A hard goal to accomplish with C++ development tools, but a worthwhile one nethertheless. Being a life long Mac user I'm accustomed to features being where they should be and not shoehorned into a dialog option six clicks down in the interface. Trying to make things obvious and easy to understand for the user is one of my goals.

Currently I work for Nokia's C++ Development Team in Austin, Texas. Most of the team hailed from the Metrowerks/Motorola/Freescale group that produced the CodeWarrior for Symbian OS development tools. Nokia thought it would be a great idea to buy the technologies they needed to support their S60 effort, and so far it seems to be working both for them and us. Currently, I manage the support group for the team. IE, we "support" the entire software development effort via user technical support, product documentation, training, and internal IT support activities.

Almost immediately after coming to Nokia they asked us for a grand plan to improve our tools offering. CodeWarrior was getting a bit long in the tooth, didn't really play well in the PC space due to its Macintosh origins, and was not very flexible when it came to adding new features. After some looking around we decided to adopt Eclipse + CDT as the basis for our new tool effort the end result was eventually released as the Carbide.c++ tools. We must be on the right track as the last two releases have won the team Jolt awards in the Mobile Development Tools category.

Anyway, our team just finished the last 1.0 release of the Carbide.c++ tools, which we call version 1.2, to lots of enthusiastic customers. Many of them helped us complete an excellent beta test cycle and were instrumental in helping us eradicate many many bugs. Thank you. We now have everything in place to begin world domination with future products, so keep an eye on us.