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Homepage of Kari LaitinenMy name is Mr. Kari Laitinen. I live in Oulu, Finland. Oulu is the world's most northern important city of information technology. My current job is to teach computer programming and related subjects to students at the School of Engineering in the Oulu University of Applied Sciences.Keywords to describe my professional interests are: software development, computer programming, software documentation, programming languages, natural languages, linguistics, natural naming, psychology of programming, and human factors in software development. For more information about my career and publications, please study my Curriculum Vitae (CV) below. Some details of my private life and other interests are given after the actual CV. My e-mail address is pronounced:
The address for paper mail is: Mr.(Dr.) Kari Laitinen
Tel. +358 (0)40 566 0869 (mobile)
(Please note that everything is listed in reverse chronological order
in this CV.)
DEGREES:
November 1995: Doctor of Philosophy from the Department of Information
Processing Science at the University of Oulu, Finland.
June 1993: Licentiate of Philosophy from the Department of Information
Processing Science of the University of Oulu, Finland. (The Licentiate
of Philosophy is a degree in the middle of Masters and Doctoral degrees
and it is part of the academic systems in North-European countries.)
October 1986: Master of Science from the Department of Electrical Engineering
of the University of Oulu, Finland.
May 1978: A Finnish diploma that permits one to study in a university
from Vaalan lukio, Finland. (In my opinion, Vaalan lukio is the best educational
institution in the world!)
THE CAREER:
Since May 1999 I have been the Principal Lecturer of embedded software
systems and software development at the School of Engineering in the
Oulu University of Applied Sciences.
From November 1998 to April 1999 I was a Research Scientist at VTT
Electronics (part of the Technical Research Centre of Finland) in Oulu,
Finland. The work consisted of research and consulting work related to
software process improvement and software documentation.
From August '98 to October '98 I was free from any paid jobs, writing
a textbook of C++ that teaches computer programming in an easy and natural
way.
From August '95 to July '98 I was a lecturer at Oulu Institute of Technology.
Subjects of teaching were programming languages (C and C++), software development
methods, digital logic, and operating systems.
From January '94 to July '95 I was a Research Scientist in the area
of embedded software at VTT Electronics (part of the Technical Research
Centre of Finland), Oulu, Finland, working in a software-maintenance-related
ESPRIT III project called AMES (Application Management Environments and
Support).
From January '93 to December '93 I was a Visiting Research Scientist
at the Department of Computer Science of the Naval
Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, U.S.A., working in co-operation
with Prof. Neil Rowe in a project which studies computer aided natural
language understanding techniques.
From June '89 to December '92 I was a research scientist in the Computer
Technology Laboratory at the Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT)
in Oulu, Finland, working in several research projects dealing with improvement
of software documentation, software reuse, and software quality assurance.
The Computer Technology Laboratory of VTT became later part of VTT Electronics.
From November '88 to May '89 I was a software developer at Edacom Data
Systems, Stansted, Essex, United Kingdom, working in software development
for cash terminal systems. The work involved also some development of software
documentation practices.
From April '87 to October '88 I was a software developer at Computercentrum
C. van de Velden B.V ., Arnhem, the Netherlands, working in software
development for cash terminal systems. An on-line bank-communication system
was the major development project of this time.
From October '86 to March '87 I worked as a software developer at Oy
Edacom Ab, Oulu, Finland, writing software for cash terminal systems.
From February '86 to September '86 I did my military service in the
Finnish armed forces. A military service is mandatory for every healthy
man in Finland. (I must say that during this time I did not much like the
military service. But nowadays I respect the Finnish war veterans very
much. During the World War II Mr. Stalin tried to occupy Finland with large
armies, but he did not manage to do it because Finnish soldiers were fighting
so hard.)
From October '84 to January '86 I worked as a software developer at
Oy Edacom Ab, Oulu, Finland, writing many kinds of software for Edacom
cash terminals.
From March 84 to September '84 I started my career as a junior software
developer at Oy Edacom Ab, Kajaani, Finland. During this time I worked
with a CP/M-based cash terminal which could be programmed with COBOL.
From September '78 to February '84 I was a student at the Department
of Electrical Engineering in the University of Oulu, Finland. In my studies
I specialized in computers and software engineering. During my student
years I had summer jobs in several Finnish companies and spent one summer
working in Sweden.
MOST IMPORTANT PUBLICATIONS:
Laitinen, K. A Natural Introduction to Computer Programming with Java.
Trafford Publishing, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, 2006, 596 pages.
ISBN 1-4120-8152-1. Go to Trafford
Internet Bookstore
Laitinen, K. A Natural Introduction to Computer Programming with C#.
Trafford Publishing, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, 2004, 602 pages.
ISBN 1-4120-4493-6. Go to Trafford
Internet Bookstore
Laitinen, K. A Natural Introduction to Computer Programming with C++.
Trafford Publishing, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, 2003, 636 pages.
ISBN 1-55395-518-8. Go to Trafford
Internet bookstore
Laitinen, K., Taramaa, J., Heikkilä, M., and Rowe, N. C.. Enhancing
Maintainability of Source Programs through Disabbreviation. The Journal
of Systems and Software, Vol. 37, No. 2, 1997, pp. 117 - 128.
Laitinen, K. Estimating Understandability of Software Documents. ACM
SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, Vol. 21, No. 4, 1996, pp. 81 - 92.
Laitinen, K. Natural Naming in Software Development and Maintenance.
VTT Publications no. 243. Technical Research Centre of Finland, Espoo,
1995, 170 pages. (Published Doctoral Thesis)
Laitinen, K. Natural Naming in Software Development: Feedback from Practitioners.
In: Proceedings of 7th International Conference on Advanced Information
Systems Engineering (CAiSE*95). Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol.
932. Springer Verlag, Berlin, 1995, pp. 375-388.
Rowe, N.C. and Laitinen, K. Semiautomatic Disabbreviation of Technical
Text. Information Processing & Management, Vol. 31, No. 6, 1995, pp.
851-857.
Laitinen, K. and Taramaa, J. A Theory to Support the Use of Natural
Naming in Software Documentation. Working papers series B33, Department
of Information Processing Science, University of Oulu, Finland, 1994, 27
pages.
Laitinen, K. Pacific: A Programming Language Based on the Idea of Natural
Naming. In: Baeza-Yates, R. (editor) Computer Science 2: Research and Applications,
Plenum Press, New York, 1994, 529-540. (This paper was first presented
in a conference in Chile in October 1993.)
Laitinen, K. The Principle of Natural Naming in Software Documentation.
VTT Research Notes no. 1498. Technical Research Centre of Finland, Espoo,
1993, 90 pages. (Also published as a thesis for the degree of the Licentiate
of Philosophy at the Department of Information Processing Science of the
University of Oulu, Finland.)
Laitinen, K. Using Natural Naming in Programming: Feedback from Practitioners.
In: Detienne, F. (editor) Proceedings of the 5th Workshop of the Psychology
of Programming Interest Group, INRIA Roquencourt, P.B.105, 78153 Le Chesnay
Cedex, France, December 1992, pp. 108-119.
Laitinen, K. 1992. Document Classification for Software Quality Systems.
ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, Vol 17, No 4, Oct. 1992, pp. 32-39.
Laitinen, K. and Mukari, T. DNN-Disciplined Natural Naming, A Method
for Systematic Name Creation in Software Development. In: Proceedings of
25th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Vol. II: Software
Technology, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, California, 1992,
pp. 91-100.
Laitinen, K. and Seppänen, V. Principles for Naming Program Elements,
A Practical Approach to Raise Informativity of Programming. In: Part I
of Proceedings of InfoJapan'90 International Conference, Information Processing
Society of Japan, 1990, pp. 79-86.
Laitinen, Kari. Suoria rahalaitosyhteyksiä tukevan osajärjestelmän
suunnittelu kassalaitteeseen. [A Subsystem for Supporting On-line Bank
Communications in a Cash Terminal System.] A thesis for the Master of Science
degree at the Department of Electrical Engineering in the University of
Oulu, Finland. 1986, 64 pages. In Finnish.
SOME PERSONAL DATA
I was born in a place called Vaala in the Finnish
countryside, 100 kilometers to the east of Oulu. My birth took place a
couple of years before the Beatles published their first record.
I do not remember the days of Beatlemania, but I remember that older
people spoke, years later, about Beatles and the 'madness' that they
caused among their listeners.
I lived the first
18 years of my life in a wooden house in Vaala. Those parts of Finland are quite
rarely populated. When I entered school, I was the only pupil in the first
grade. There was this benefit that I could easily win the skiing competition
of the first grade. Later, though, the school was merged to another school
where there were more pupils. That meant the end for my skiing career.
Most of my adult years I have lived in Oulu, first as a student, then
as a software engineer, later as a researcher, and now as a teacher and
writer. I have, though, spent some time elsewhere in Finland and abroad.
During the 80s, I worked one and half years in Holland and a half year
in England. Holland is a particularly interesting country as the Dutch
have lived and worked centuries in prosperity without engaging themselves
in wars. They have even conquered their land from the sea. Living in England
was, of course, also a great experience. Half of the world has once belonged
to the British Empire, and now the English language is becoming THE language
of the world.
During the 90s, I have been doing scientific work at the Technical Research
Centre of Finland (VTT), which is a nice organization that gives many possibilities
to do what you want. While I was doing my research at VTT, I spent one
sabbathical year in the U.S.A. at Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey,
California. California is a really nice place for a person that is used
to the climate of Finland. The weather in Monterey is all year round like
the summers in Oulu.
I have studied many languages during my life. Languages are fascinating.
Also my research deals with languages. At the mandatory schools in Finland
I have studied Finnish, English, Swedish, and German. Later I have studied
French and Spanish at popular evening schools. While I was in Holland,
I studied Dutch, which is now my best spoken language after Finnish and
English. As Dutch people usually speak foreign languages, they are always
overwhelmed that somebody speaks their language. Once I studied some Portuguese
as I had a very beautiful reason to do so. Later I tried to learn some
Greek and Latin but I have forgotten most of these studies. During the
90s I tried to improve my English because I wrote a lot in English. I thought
that studying other foreign languages might prevent me from improving my
English. Very recently I have found out that this is not true. Now I'm
again studying Spanish, and it seems that my output in English improves
when I exercise my brains with another foreign language.
Music? During my years as a student in the beginning of 80s, I used
to play drums in amateur rock'n'roll bands. We made some public performances
but the great success never came. A few years ago I started to play drums again
when some colleagues wanted to put up a kind of show group which needed
also music players. Now I know that it is very important to practice,
practice, and practice to become a decent drummer. Somebody should have
said this to me 30 years ago.
To list some of my favourite bands and
singers, I would like to say that the Rolling Stones are still among the
most fascinating performers. Also the Beatles struck me when I was 13,
but the Stones have found my heart during the later decades. There were
some months in my life that I had to listen to a band named Police at least
two hours every day. Police has probably fascinated all drum players. Once
I found Motörhead, and I have even once seen them at Hammersmith Odeon
in London. Then I have been listening to Queen, ZZ-Top, Pink Floyd, Doors,
David Bowie, and Elvis Presley. I also like black female singers such as
Tina Turner and Whitney Houston. Edith Piaf is great. The voice of Maria
Callas brings tears in my eyes. There are plenty of excellent Finnish performers
which I like. Nowadays there are Finnish bands which are internationally
known. These include Bomfunk MCs, HIM, Nightwish, and Lordi.
Movies? I believe that I have seen at least 1000 movies in my life.
It is quite impossible to say which one is the best movie. There are so
many excellent films. I like movies by Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa,
Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Clint Eastwood,
etc. etc. I have had to watch many times movies like Casablanca, Bridges
of Madison County, and Titanic where love stories are short and great.
Literature? When I was younger I read all books by the Finnish author Mika Waltari
(I recommend that you read a novel named "The Egyptian" by Mika Valtari. That has
been translated to many languages.)
I have read many books by Dostoyevski,
but I have not been able to finish the Karamachov Brothers although I have
started it at least two times. Anna Karenina and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
are superb books, and the Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas is one
of the most entertaining books. Once I was very enthusiastic about the
books of Ernest Hemingway. I even had to travel to Spain to see a bullfight
after reading Hemingway's books. I'm proud to say that I have read the
Finnish translation of James Joyce's Ulysses, and that book is an absolute
literary masterpiece. I have also the English version of Ulysses, but I
have not yet seriously started that. I have dreamed about writing an own
novel but at this moment I am very satisfied if I can write programming
books that people like. I have, though, many ideas for various kinds of
books.
Sports? I try to go to a gym at least once a week to keep the some physical
condition in my body. During the summer time I use the bicycle. My colleagues
urge me to buy skis but I just wait for the summer to come. Bullfight is
still the sport event that I most often go to see live. I have seen 2 live
bullfights in my life but only one football match, only one ice-hockey
match, only one Formula 1 race, and only one Indycar race. In Oulu we have
a great ice hockey team but I cannot go to see the matches because then
I would loose my status as a frequent bullfight visitor.
Bars? I have visited many bars in my life but I'll tell more about this
subject in the future.
Cars? Because we have a nice public transport here in Oulu, I have been
able live without a car for many years. Some years ago, however, I decided
to become a car owner again, and I happened to find a beautiful secondhand
red sport car. But I still use my bicycle. I also like cycling during the winter.
I do not have to go skiing as I can see the snowy scenery while I am going to
work with my bicycle.
Women? I am still a bachelor, but I'm not proud of it.
I used to have pictures on these pages. If there is somebody who would
still like to view those photos, please let me know.
I am enthusiastic about calendars and calendar
reform .
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